Catholic Peacebuilding The Best Story Never Told

Catholic Peacebuilding:

The Best Story Never Told

Gerard F. Powers

The Catholic Peacebuilding Network links Catholic Bishops’ Conferences, Catholic development agencies, universities, and independent peace organizations in an effort to enhance the study and practice of conflict prevention, conflict management, and post-conflict reconciliation in war-torn areas.

Iis the catholic church a peacebuilding church? Is it a church that, in its daily life (not just in its teachings) is engaged in preventing violent conflict, limiting and stopping it when it occurs, and promoting rebuilding, healing, and reconciliation after the violence ends? In many places, the answer is yes. But much of that peacebuilding work is unknown, unheralded, and underanalyzed. The Church’s role in the Colombia conflict is a case in point. For too long, Colombia has been a poster child for intractable conflicts. But in the past three decades it has become an exemplar of Catholic peacebuilding. It has been five years since the historic peace accord between the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas ended a five-decade insurgency. During his 2015 visit to Cuba, where the Colombia peace talks were dragging into their fourth year, Pope Francis is credited with contributing to a breakthrough in the talks. Two years later, his historic visit to Colombia gave a boost to implementation of the

FARC accord and led to a temporary cease-fire with the

ELN, a smaller rebel group not part of the FARC accord. The pope’s role in the peace processes was only possible because of the fertile peacebuilding ground prepared during decades of work by the Catholic community. The Church has accompanied the victims of violence, negotiated local cease-fires and hostage releases, promoted human rights, mobilized peace movements, 30 c21 resources | spring/summer 2022

and held vigils, disarmament days, and peace weeks. According to Professor John Paul Lederach, a renowned Mennonite peacebuilder who has trained many Catholic leaders, the Church’s “ubiquitous presence,” with relationships at every level and nearly every area of conflict, creates a depth and breadth of access that few religious or secular institutions enjoy. He concludes, “there are few places where the infrastructure and ecclesiology of Church structure so neatly aligns with the multilevel and multifaceted demands of peacebuilding.”

The Colombian bishops were invited to be part of the FARC talks but decided not to take on such a political role, choosing instead to work with the wider civil society in supporting the process. The bishops did, however, play a key role in ensuring that civil society— and, for the first time in a formal peace process, victims— had a voice in the peace negotiations. And a group of bishops now facilitates the peace process between the government and the ELN.

Now the Church is playing a major role in helping to implement the accord. Msgr. Héctor Fabio Henao, director of the bishops’ Social Pastorate/Caritas Colombia, was the first head of the National Council for Peace, which includes all major actors in Colombia. He now heads the official effort to establish peace councils in the territories most impacted by the violence. The official truth commission is headed by another priest, Fr. Francisco de Roux, S.J.

The official monitor of these and other aspects of the FARC accord is the Barometer Project of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, the first academic institution to play such a role. A key factor in the success of this novel effort is that it is done in partnership with the bishops’ Social Pastorate, which houses its Colombia-based staff. This partnership gives the project the credibility and access needed to navigate the complex process of monitoring implementation of the world’s most comprehensive peace accord.

The Church’s peacebuilding in Colombia is not an anomaly. It is what CPN finds in many places torn by conflict: a church blessed with an amazing array of artisans of peace.

One reason this partnership was possible was that the Catholic Peacebuilding Network (CPN), whose secretariat is at the Kroc Institute, had been working with the bishops in Colombia for many years. Founded in 2004, CPN consists of two dozen university institutes, bishops’ conferences, development agencies, and peace organizations that collaborate to enhance the study and practice of Catholic peacebuilding. Boston College’s Theology Department has been active in CPN since its founding. CPN seeks to deepen engagement among scholars and practitioners in further development of a theology, ethics, and praxis of peacebuilding, and accompanies the Church’s peacebuilding work in Colombia, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, and Mindanao, in the Philippines.

One role CPN plays is convenor. In 2007, for example, more than 50 Catholic peacebuilders—bishops, peacebuilding specialists, and scholars—from two dozen countries met in Bogota for a week to learn about the Church’s work in Colombia and to discuss common peacebuilding challenges. Delegations from Colombia have participated in a half-dozen similar CPN conferences in the United States, in Mindanao, in Burundi, and at the Vatican. CPN’s June 2022 conference will be hosted by the Colombian Bishops’ Conference and Javeriana University.

These convenings of diverse actors help integrate theory and practice, social teaching, and social action. Church leaders and other peacebuilders benefit from the theoretical and comparative perspective that scholars bring. Scholars enhance their research and teaching by engaging Church leaders and peacebuilding specialists from areas suffering from conflict.

These convenings also enable cross-fertilization across countries (horizontal) and different levels (vertical), so that Catholic peacebuilders and scholars can share wisdom and good practices, and address common challenges. What does it mean, for example, to celebrate the Eucharist in a rural parish in Colombia or the Congo, where violent groups and their victims share a pew at Sunday Mass? Given these kinds of challenges, the Church in Colombia recognizes that the peace accord will fail if it cannot cultivate a culture of reconciliation to replace a culture of violence. That is why, in 2014, the bishops formed a CPN for Colombia, la Red Católica Nacional de Reconciliación (National Catholic Network of Reconciliation). That is an example of the communal acts of reconciliation that Boston College theologian Lisa Cahill says the Church must promote. And such communal acts must be grounded in the local context, as Steve Pope, her BC colleague, emphasizes in his workshops on reconciliation with Church leaders and groups in Colombia, Burundi, Uganda, and El Salvador. In order to assist the Church in Colombia and elsewhere in promoting reconciliation, CPN developed a pastoral planning tool, which has been widely distributed in Colombia and elsewhere. (A similar pastoral planning tool is being developed on the Church’s role in mining, a major issue that will impact the success of the peace process in Colombia.)

Another role CPN plays is strategic advising. In August 2012, just prior to the announcement of new peace talks with FARC, CPN, Catholic Relief Services, the Kroc Institute, and Social Pastorate/Caritas sponsored an intensive strategic planning session for the bishops’ conference. As a result, the bishops established a peace council that enabled them to improve coordination among their many peacebuilding initiatives and enhance their effectiveness in engaging the new peace process.

A final CPN role is to help further develop a theology and ethics of peacebuilding. Like peacebuilding, in general, mining is an issue in need of more theological and ethical reflection. The Colombian government is relying, in part, on mining in the Amazon to deliver a peace dividend. To help the Church address the challenges posed by mining, CPN and Caritas Colombia developed an extensive database, which mapped the extent of mining and the diverse ways the local Church has responded. In a chapter on Colombia in a new CPN book on mining, Sandra Polanía-Reyes and Msgr. Henao call for pastoral dialogues to promote inclusive engagement, especially by the marginalized, in resolving disputes over mining. They also call for a new paradigm that rejects a utilitarian economics or solely rights-based approach in favor of a theology of creation and an integral approach to mining.

Fortunately, the Church’s peacebuilding in Colombia is not an anomaly. It is what CPN finds in many places torn by conflict: a church blessed with an amazing array of artisans of peace. It is a part of living Catholicism that needs to be better known, understood, and strengthened, so that becoming the peacebuilding Church we are called to be is not the best story never told. ■

Gerard F. Powers is director of Catholic peacebuilding studies and professor of the practice for the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He is also coordinator of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network. c21 resources | spring/summer 2022 31