The Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Sciences at the Vatican, Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, has described the signing of a peace pact without an action plan as “meaningless.”
According to him, peace is an attitude of the heart and must be demonstrated as such.
His comments came after a plea from the National Peace Council for political leaders to sign a document of goodwill ahead of the crucial December 7 general elections.
In an interview on TV3, he stated, “Peace is actually and essentially an attitude of the spirit, an attitude of the heart.”
He further explained, “How does that correspond to how you feel deep within? If there’s no correspondence between the signature on the paper and what you feel deep within, it’s meaningless.”
Cardinal Turkson emphasized that true peace requires more than just signing a document: “To be at peace with a person is to accept the person deep down within. You consider us a brother, as a neighbor… be at peace with the person.”
He urged that we need to go deeper than simply appending our signature onto some formulas, highlighting that “to be peaceful with whatever it is an attitudinal change and attitudinal relationship between you and the other.”
