Saturday, February 19, 2000
Peace is active, Assisi friar says
BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CRESTVIEW HILLS — Peace is a way of living life, not simply an ethereal feeling, a Franciscan friar from Assisi, Italy, told Thomas More College students Friday. “Peace is not something that stops war but something that is positive,” Father Gian Maria Polidoro said.
Father Polidoro is the founder of Assisi Pax Internazionale, an organization that works for and studies peace. He spent this week meeting with Tristate students, teachers, government and religious leaders, and Newport's Millennium Peace Bell Co.
He was invited to the Tristate by Covington residents Laura Papallo and David Stolberg.
The friar said he speaks about peace because he believes in it, just as St. Francis of Assisi did. He encouraged students to promote peace in their lives and in the broader community.
That's the same message he has shared with world leaders — former President Reagan; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; Libya's Moammar Gadhafi; Portuguese President Samora Machel; and members of a Mozambique guerrilla movement.
“We always speak of the not-so-beautiful qualities of our neighbors,” Father Polidoro said. “We many times think not positively of others. This is why all of our relations many times come as a conflict.”
People can create a culture, or civilization of peace, by treating others with respect, working together and always taking the positive road of action.
That philosophy should be carried out in all walks of life, Father Polidoro said, whether it is in politics, business, international relations, schools, churches or hospitals.
“The European Union is important because it invented a way of not being conflicted with each other, but a way of being together,” Father Polidoro said.
“If everyone makes his job thinking of peace and not conflict, and everything he does and speaks is peace, we shall reach a civilization of peace,” Father Polidoro said. “It is not something out of reach. It is possible.”
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