Brazil Frternity Campaign: Peace Is the Fruit of Justice

(February 26, 2009) Pope Benedict XVI has sent a Message to Archbishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha, president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, for Ash Wednesday, of the Fraternity Campaign traditionally promoted by the Brazilian Church during Lent. This year the campaign has as its theme: "Peace is the fruit of justice". In his Message the Pope refers to the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in the Brazilian city of Aparecida in 2007, and recalls how the final document of that gathering described the "clear signs of the presence of the Kingdom of God, in the individual and community experience of the Beatitudes, in the evangelisation of the poor, ... in universal access to the goods of creation, in mutual, sincere and fraternal forgiveness, ... and in the struggle not to succumb to the temptation of becoming slaves to evil". "Lent calls us to an unfailing struggle to do good, precisely because we know how difficult it is for us, as human beings, to dedicate ourselves seriously to the practice of justice, a justice more than ever necessary for a coexistence based on peace and love and not on hatred and indifference. Yet we know that, even if we achieve a reasonable distribution of wealth and a harmonious organisation of society, nothing can remove the pain of sickness, misunderstanding, solitude, the death of people we love, or an awareness of our own limitations". "Our Lord", the Holy Father writes, "abhors injustice and condemns those who practice it; yet He respects individual liberty.”