The following statement was issued March 9 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, for immediate and widespread international circulation and endorsement. We encourage signatures of endorsement from religious leaders of all faiths, as well as from people of good faith, to urgently develop the dialogue of civilizations needed for world peace.
Holy Father,
I am writing to you at this grave hour of mankind, as you may be the only person who could hopefully avoid a descent into what you yourself have called an “irreparable abyss,” an escalation of the unprovoked war against Iran into potentially a global nuclear war, which would end all life on Earth.
The world has now entered a radically worse phase, in which international law has been declared nonexistent; the so-called “rules-based order” declared as always having been a charade; and the principle of “might makes right” elevated to be the privilege of the powerful. As a result, billions of people are suffering a dramatic worsening of their living conditions, and countless people are paying with their lives. But still worse, if the present course of events is not changed, the ultimate sin may be committed: the annihilation of the human species for the sake of satanic delusions.
Millions of ordinary people, in total despair, are asking: What can be done to change the course of history, when many governments, especially in the West, are obviously incapable of fulfilling their obligation to avoid damage to the people for whom they are responsible? Where are the institutions that can bring the remedy at this late hour?
Something that could be a positive, maybe even decisive step to arouse the consciousness of the world—in the spirit of the 1439 Council of Florence, and Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of unity of the church, bringing delegations of the Orthodox Church to the Councils of Florence and Ferrara—, would be for you, your Holiness, together with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, and Patriarch Bartholomäus I of Constantinople, to take a most courageous step. Together, call for all religious leaders of the world, as well as all people of good faith, believers and non-believers alike, to step forward in defense of peace.
Last year, on October 25th. in your Angelus sermon, you evoked the great philosopher and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa and his notion of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, as the necessary method of thinking to bind things together in the world today. It was that same method of thinking which underlay Cusa’s beautiful dialogue “De Pace Fidei,” about “peace in faith,” which he wrote in answer to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. That dialogue served to uplift the thinking of the people of his time to the highest possible level—that despite distinct rites and practices, there is a knowable understanding that there is only one God, and one truth, which can, and must, be brought to believers of all faiths
At a time when there is the danger of a world war, and when some use the cloak of religion to argue for an early Armageddon, that same voice of reason must be raised, and the same question asked, as did the representatives of 17 nations and religions ask God in “De Pace Fidei.” It cannot be that people kill each other in the name of God.
The bells of all churches should begin to ring, the Adhan of all mosques should be shouted, the Shofar of all synagogues should be blown, in the whole world in this moment of utmost urgency to save mankind from its final tragedy.
If, as a first step, the Churches of the West and the East would unite and campaign actively and daily for world peace, this could affect the majority of people to express their commitment for peace and thus cause a change in world history, fulfilling the will of God, who for sure did not create the world and gift humanity with reason, to have it destroyed by the lack of it.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Founder, Schiller Institute
