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Non-Violence and Peace-Making, Lessons from Oscar Romero, Denis Hurley and Pope Francis

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Non-Violence and Peace-Making, Lessons from Oscar Romero, Denis Hurley and Pope Francis Non-violence and peace-making, lessons from Oscar Romero, Denis Hurley and Pope Francis Sisters and brothers, good evening to you all. I wish to thank Raymond Perrier, all those involved in planning this evening, and all of you who have come for this annual event….thank you for the privilege of being with you this evening. I am hoping to share something of my journey with others in the search for a better world based on a commitment to active non-violence and just peacemaking – in the light of three important historical figures: Archbishop Romero, Archbishop Hurley and Pope Francis. But I take you firstly to a true personal story and experience. We open our doors to everyone - even though they might come in to kill us. I heard those powerful words from a soft-spoken Syrian Jesuit with pain-filled eyes during a ceremony in a church in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, on Sunday evening, 8 June, 2014. That evening I was privileged to give the Jesuit Refugee Service Syria the 2014 Pax Christi International Peace Award together with my Pax Christi International Co-President, Mrs. Marie Dennis from the USA. The two Jesuit recipients, accompanied by a member of their Leadership Team from Rome, were Fr. Mourad Abou Seif on the right of Marie Dennis and Fr. Ziad Halil, on her left. Earlier that day in Sarajevo we had listened to Fr. Mourad and Fr. Ziad describe the terrible suffering in that protracted war, and their work with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Homs and Aleppo where both of them have remained, in spite of the assassination of Fr. Frans van der Lught, a brother Jesuit priest in Syria in April, 2013. Yes! They did come in and they killed him, but yes! those Jesuit priests have stayed with their people and are witnessing to non-violence and peace together with groups of Muslim and Christian peace activists with whom they work in providing humanitarian relief, education, health-care, and above all hope, which few know about. But, as Fr. Mourad said: We open our doors to everyone - even though they might come in to kill us. And we will never stop opening our doors. We can only find our safety in God. And last month Sister Annie Demerjian gave a heartrending account of her ministry in war torn Aleppo when she addressed the Annual Meeting of the organisation Aid to the Church in Need at Westminster Cathedral Hall in London. Aleppo is a broken city where life hardly exists.... Aleppo has become a city of death. She concluded by appealing for prayers: Our world is a gift from God. Part of it is bleeding. Be peacemakers for us and our children. 1 The 21st Hurley memorial lecture given on the 8 November 2016 by Bishop Kevin Dowling C.Ss.R It is appalling experiences like those in Syria with over 400,000 people killed already – but just one example of wars, atrocities and violence – that has driven Pope Francis to state that we are in the midst of a ‘third world war in installments’. Our whole world – from the international arena, right down to experiences at the local level in many countries in the world, including our own in South Africa – seems to be trapped in a cycle of never-ending violence. We recall the crime statistics for the year till April 2016 released by the Minister of Police on 29 September: among other very worrying statistics on violence, the murder rate had risen to 17805, or 49 homicides per day. Atrocities and wars, the use of violence to force through whatever one wants to get, the destruction of property, the violation of the human rights of others, the culture of impunity and so on and so on….has this to be accepted as the norm today in our world, and here in South Africa? Surely there has to be another way to deal with divisions and conflict between nations without going to war and killing thousands of innocent children and people?; surely there is another way here to seek objectives like a wage increase or to solve issues like municipal demarcations, without resorting to violent protests and destruction of property? There is a great, great need for healing in our land. But even with the analysis of all the reasons why people opt for violence, and the causes behind their anger and despair about change, does that justify violence – and if not, what is to be done about this? Surely at all levels of society and the world we need to promote and consolidate another mindset, another way of thinking based on real values and on a commitment to respectful encounter and dialogue as the first step in conflict resolution… Or does the sheer level of violence throughout the world, and here in South Africa, make one stop and think, and perhaps begin to doubt that there is an innate goodness in humankind which can motivate people to solve problems peacefully instead of through violence? A few weeks ago, an article appeared in The Tablet about Amos Oz, widely regarded as Israel’s greatest novelist. In an interview he said this: Jesus Christ is very close to my heart. I love his poetry. I love his wonderful sense of humour. I love his tenderness. I love his compassion. I have always regarded him as one of the greatest Jews who ever lived… But Jesus Christ believes in universal love. He believes that the whole of humankind can live as one happy family. He believes we can quench our internal violence and prejudices and become better human beings. I don’t.” He pauses, carefully choosing the right words to continue with his train of thought: I defer from his faith in the basic goodness of human nature. It is very hard to believe in this as a child of the twentieth century… Amos Oz is a person who has doubts about humankind’s essential goodness when he looks at the evil and violence which people are capable of doing. For me, it is people like Oscar Romero, Denis Hurley, Pope Francis, Mahatma Gandhi - and in my own faith, the person of Jesus - who give me hope that there is another way….all of them were or are the very antithesis of the violence that this world and so many seem committed to consign to the children of the future, and indeed to the planet. 2 The 21st Hurley memorial lecture given on the 8 November 2016 by Bishop Kevin Dowling C.Ss.R In March 2005 I was privileged to participate in a week long reflection in El Salvador to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed by a single shot from a sniper. I listened to fascinating theological reflections by great theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez. But we also listened to the witness of the campesinos, the poor peasant farmers and families who suffered horrendous atrocities and massacres at the hands of the notorious Salvadoran National Guard and death squads, whose officers were allegedly trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia, USA, which gained notoriety and was then renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. I prayed at the altar where Romero fell while celebrating Mass – everything the same except for the inscription on the wall: ‘At this altar Monsignor Oscar A Romero offered his life for his people’. I visited the simple rose garden at the University of Central America where the 6 Jesuits and their housekeeper and her daughter were shot to death by an elite unit of the Guard. And the site where the 3 religious sisters and a lay missionary were raped and murdered by these extremely violent military personnel. Archbishop Romero, from the perspective of his context, analyzed violence in our world thus: The Church does not approve or justify bloody revolution and cries of hatred. But neither can it condemn them while it sees no attempt to remove the causes that produce that ailment in our society....”1.... I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally”.2 And we could add to his list of examples of structural violence. In many ways, the Catholic Church in South Africa during the struggle against the structural violence of apartheid tried to tread that difficult and challenging path of Monseñor Romero – being constructively supportive through our solidarity and action with the poor, the suffering and oppressed; actively engaging in the quest for change and for a peace based on justice; and committing to the protection/promotion of human rights and the rights of the people’s movements and organisations on the ground. In a situation that was always so volatile and unpredictable it was not easy for the bishops to maintain a consistent and thought-through prophetic stance. But as the oppression became more brutal especially in the late 1970s and 1980s, the bishops took an increasingly principled stand - their call for justice and change became ever clearer. We had our prophet in the person of Archbishop Denis Hurley who invited and inspired our Church leadership and people towards more conscious and committed involvement in the struggle for justice, without which there could be no resolution to the impasse. He was one of 1 Romero, Homilias, 12 February, 1978, ‘Romero, The Violence of Love’, pg.
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