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In our blog, Pat Gaffney, General Secretary of Pax Christi UK, describes a new peace initiative

It is not often that I can actually feel that we are ‘getting somewhere’ in this long-haul journey of peacemaking. I guess I see myself as a plodder anyway, keeping on with the letter-writing, campaigning, production of resources, the “fruit of anxious daily care” that Pope Paul VI spoke of many years ago. The work we have to do whether we are effective or not.

But, there is a shift, a feel that we may just be tipping the balance on a breakthrough with our message of active peacemaking and nonviolence. Part of the shift is the person of Pope Francis – since his appointment in 2013 his words and actions for peace have been crystal clear: from nuclear weapons, Spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations, to money making from the arms trade, We plead for peace for this world dominated by arms-dealers, who profit from the blood of men and women. His language reaches hearts and minds and is engaging people of faith, and people of no faith.

The ‘getting somewhere’ is the ground-breaking work coming out of the joint conference of Pax Chrsiti International and the Pontifical Council for Justice & Peace last April which produced the Appeal to the Catholic Church to re-commit to the centrality of Gospel nonviolence. This set the cat among the pigeons. Accusations came that the Church was being urged to ditch the Just War tradition. That the naïve pacifists were going to leave the world unguarded. To me, some of this seemed like deliberate mis-representation by those who unwilling to delve into the tradition and practice of active nonviolence and its value in creating long-lasting, sustainable peace.

The gathering offered concrete examples of how nonviolence is twice as effective as violence and is likely to produce more sustainable and democratic communities. The gathering gave a platform to practitioners of nonviolence like Fr Francisco de Roux from Colombia who has worked for justice and nonviolent change for more than twenty years. He challenged the Catholic Church for its support of the just war paradigm which has sustained so much violence in that country.

It was good also to hear of the painstaking work of dialogue and mediation in preventing the escalation of violence in countries like Sudan and Uganda and the DRC. The good news of church leaders and workers confronting those who use violence, facilitating conversations between warring groups, is little acknowledged yet this is politics for peace in action. In recent days the Bishops of DRC have been internationally thanked for the key role they are playing in trying to prevent a new civil war in that country.

Contributing to this ‘getting somewhere’, is the theme of the 2017 World Peace Day message, Nonviolence, a style of politics for peace. The first time in 50 years of messages that nonviolence has featured in a theme and been explored so deeply. Pope Francis gets it. He tells us that violence won’t cure the problems of our world. He reminds us that the Gospel, and the person of Jesus, are about nonviolence – setting out a radically different approaches. He highlights witness of those who show us that nonviolence is about action, risk-taking, confronting injustice, following in the footsteps of Jesus, Gandhi, Khaffer Khan, Martin Luther King jr, the peace women leaders of Liberia, the Christians of Eastern Europe who all brought about change through nonviolent means.

The door is ajar, our work is to push it wide-open by growing these ideas in our schools, parishes in the formation of Christians. Teaching about the active nonviolence of Jesus.

Training church workers in mediation and conflict resolution. Acting up against the arms trade and the mis-use of resources on warfare. This has become the work of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, to develop our imagination, our skills and our resources in the Church towards becoming ‘credible promoters of nonviolent peacemaking’. (646)

Pat Gaffney has been General Secretary of the British Section of Pax Christi since 1990. She is a member of the on-going Catholic Nonviolence working group.

Endorse the Appeal to the Catholic Church to re-commit to Gospel nonviolence 

World Peace Day Message 

All jobs come with unexpected days -  however there was nothing in the 2 ½ years I had worked in the Civil Service which prepared me for the first week of November 2016 when I was sent to Calais to see the last days of the “jungle”. 

Most of the camp’s residents had been cleared, but there remained between 1500 and 1700 unaccompanied children and young families. Following an agreement between the UK and French governments these people would be taken to reception centres and considered for travel to the UK. The purpose of sending us was to show the presence of the British government, to reassure those being transported that this was not a trick by the French authorities, and that they’d not been forgotten. 

It felt strange to be going to a place which I had heard and read so much about. The graffiti on bridges calling for access to the UK, or freedom to travel remained, but the rest of the camp was gone.

All that remained was debris, and the Eritrean church. This became a sanctuary on the Tuesday evening when tensions between the Eritrean, and Afghan communities had erupted. It too was bulldozed as we watched on Thursday morning.

Part of me knew how unsuitable the camp at Calais had become Residents were vulnerable to attack, the weather was so often bad, the local people and police had become increasingly hostile local, and then there were the “agents” - people smugglers who exploited their desperation  with promises of a passage to the UK. 

But while I was there, I witnessed both love and tears. There was the love of volunteers who had put themselves at the service of the refugees, offering language classes, legal assistance, and the support that the state refused. I was moved by the tearful goodbyes between volunteers and migrants. 

This was a real community of people broken up over those few days. And it is people’s stories that stay with me. 

Wais, a young Afghan asylum seeker travelling with his wife, and Abeel, their 2½-year-old son, spoke about his life back home,  the disappearance of his mother, and kidnap of his sister many years ago. Then there were the events that had led him to leave Afghanistan with a new-born child. He also told me how he’d spoken with his mother. She was a refugee who had been safe in the UK for the last seven years. She had long believed him to be dead. They had not met because she was unable to afford to travel to France, but Wais was hoping to be reunited with her soon.

I also talked with Jamal, at 14-years-old, the eldest of six children travelling with their mother.  His youngest sister was just five weeks old, born in the camp. He spoke about their lives, his hope to see his father in the UK – and wanting to visit Manchester to see Man United play. 

I travelled back trying to reflect on what I’d seen. I believe it was a lack of compassion and humanity that led to the growth of the camp at Calais. Whatever our country’s legal obligations, seeing people living in misery, and throwing themselves under the wheels of trains and lorries in attempts to reach safety seems to have been drowned out by hate-mongering headlines and the resurgent far-right. Even those few we do welcome are subjected to the ignorance of the media, and sycophantic politicians making baseless demands for dental examinations to “prove their age”. 

My new role with Justice and Peace Scotland promises to be a busy and varied one. But I hope that journey, a week after I had learnt of my success in being appointed, will stay with me here in Scotland. 

“You must treat the outsider as one of your native-born people - as a full citizen - and you are to love him in the same way you love yourself; for remember, you were once strangers living in Egypt.” Leviticus 19:34

(Danny is Social Justice Co-ordinator for Justice and Peace Scotland. Originally from Stockport, he is a lay volunteer with the Salesian of Don Bosco.)
 

As I write, it’s exactly a year since our new Syrian residents arrived here on the Isle of Bute. The families celebrated the anniversary by cooking a fabulous lunch for everyone who has been involved in helping them settle, both statutory agencies and volunteers.  

The first 10 families were followed in February by 5 more and recently some relatives have been able to join their families under the reunification programme.   

I’m one of the volunteers who have sought to support our new residents.  It’s been a fascinating and at times challenging experience.  There was a huge response to Argyll & Bute Council’s appeal for volunteers.  We were asked to staff a pop-up community centre where the families could meet each other and be contacted by the various supporting agencies.  St Andrews RC church here in Rothesay offered the use of their hall. This proved invaluable as a meeting place and for the distribution of the generous donations which flooded in.   

The experience has been and continues to be a big learning curve for the statutory agencies and for the volunteers.  Intent on preparing as best we could by learning about the culture of the Syrians, we quickly realised - what is obvious when you think about it -  that our new arrivals did not constitute a homogeneous group. Encouraged not to offer a handshake to the men for example, we found that some cheerfully offered their hand.  On matters religious, some are more secular, some more observing.  

A few arrived with good English, some with a little, most with none at all.  What a challenge when you need to learn even the alphabet!   I found it hard to see someone who had run a business in his own country struggling to write his name in an unfamiliar alphabet and working across the page from left to right.  

   
We could only surmise what horrors they might have experienced.  Some have spoken about it, some not.  What we can know both from the news and from their own accounts is that they live with constant worry about the fate of those left behind.  But there is good news too.  Already four babies have been born to the families, a wonderful sign of new life.   One father proudly declared that his baby daughter was a Scottish Syrian.  

Most are settling remarkably well, one or two in employment, some in training and some volunteering for community projects.  Some families, inevitably, have struggled.   So too have the volunteers at times!  On an island such as ours, there isn’t an existing refugee support organisation so our volunteers are gathered from scratch without the framework of an existing agency.  

Communication is an ongoing challenge, even with improving language skills.   After the drop-in centre closed, some of us have continued working with the families, particularly in the area of language support and befriending.  Currently a new cohort of volunteers is being trained.  

The local community has been welcoming on the whole but there have been some instances of hostility.  It is easy to criticise those we may be tempted to label as racist or xenophobic.  What this experience has taught me is that so-called ‘liberal’ attitudes and indeed a Christian theology of inclusiveness should not preclude an honest acknowledgement of the challenges that being ‘inclusive’ brings.  If we are not able to say ‘this is difficult’ or ‘I don’t agree with such and such a cultural practice’, then either we retreat from debate or we speak in bland terms that slide over the real challenges of cultural diversity.