At the annual meeting of the Coordinating Team of the Carmelite NGO, the decision was made to focus on religious freedom for the coming year. In his 2011 Message for World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI picked up that theme to reflect on the persecution, discrimination, and terrible acts of violence and religious intolerance that marked 2010. He reaffirms that "the right to religious freedom is rooted in the very dignity of the human person," and is "at the origin of moral freedom."

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Papal Message for World Day of Peace - January 1, 2010
If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation

In his 2010 Message for World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI writes that mankind's inhumanity to one another has brought threats to peace as well as authentic and integral human development. But he sees the threats arising from the neglect and misuse of the earth and the natural resources God has given to us as the most dangerous of all. He calls upon humanity to "renew and strengthen" the covenant between human beings and the environment.

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Papal Message for World Day of Peace - January 1, 2009
Fighting Poverty to Build Peace

In his 2009 Message for World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI asks nations to combat poverty by including the poor, making them active partners in development. Population control policies are "irrational," the ideologies that want redistribution of wealth are "illusory," the current financial system and its disastrous techniques are "based upon very short-term thinking." The education of the poor and sharing are the path of the Church's mission, and of peace.

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Papal Message for World Day of Peace - January 1, 2008
The Human Family, A Community of Peace

The first form of communion between persons is that born of the love of a man and a woman who decide to enter a stable union in order to build together a new family. But the peoples of the earth, too, are called to build relationships of solidarity and cooperation among themselves, as befits members of the one human family: "All peoples"-as the Second Vatican Council declared-"are one community and have one origin, because God caused the whole human race to dwell on the face of the earth (cf. Acts 17:26); they also have one final end, God."

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Papal Message for World Day of Peace - January 1, 2007
The Human Person, the Heart of Peace

Peace is an irrepressible yearning present in the heart of each person, regardless of his or her particular cultural identity. Consequently, everyone should feel committed to service of this great good, and should strive to prevent any form of untruth from poisoning relationships.

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Past Papal Messages for World Day of Peace
pre 2002  |  2002  |  2003  |  2004  |  2005  |  2006