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Stop the wars while there is still time, pope tells Sant’Egidio peace summit in Paris

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Several thousand participants from around the globe attend the 38th “International Meeting for Peace” in Paris 22-24 September, 2024, organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio. The event’s closing ceremony took place 24 September in front of the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral, set to reopen Dec. 8 following years of reconstruction and renovation after the devastating fire of April 15, 2019. (OSV News photo/courtesy Sant’Egidio Community)

Paris welcomed several thousand participants from around the globe taking part in the 38th “International Meeting for Peace” 22-24 September, organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

In a message to the gathering read during a closing event in front of Notre Dame Cathedral 24 September, Pope Francis said that “the risk that the many conflicts will dangerously spread instead of ending is more than real,” and that he takes up “your cry and that of the many people affected by war, and I address it to political leaders: Stop the war! Stop the wars! We are destroying the world! Let us stop while there is still time!”

High level participants of the peace meeting included French President Emmanuel Macron, Sant’Egidio’s founder Andrea Riccardi, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, who is primate of the Anglican Communion, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, who is rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, and Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia.

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In remarks 22 September, Macron called for entering into a “creative dynamic” to “imagine peace,” the meeting’s theme. “Before imagining peace, there is the need to humanise (the world) once again, to know each other, to understand, to have the patience to observe,” he stressed. Riccardi called for the rediscovery of the culture of peace, emphasising how the modern world seems to have drifted away from this fundamental value.

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