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Wednesday, Aug, 12, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET
Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s closing remarks to IPC #166:
Well, I think the crucial question was posed by you, Jack, earlier in your remarks, when you said we have to look for moral leaders. Because answering the question of the nun from Spain, I think the letter you have composed, Jack, with the letter to the Pope going through Archbishop Wester, but then basically making that a rallying point for everybody. I think that that points to the right way to go for the highest possible solution, which would be moral leadership from the Pope and to get together the three leaders of the most powerful nations in the world. That is China, the United States, and Russia. And that way, you have something to rally everybody around.
Because the problem is, and I agree with what Scott Ritter had to say about that you cannot be happy that the Anglo-American empire is clearly in a decline, because I have said many times, and I believe that deeply, that while the Soviet Union disintegrated peacefully in 1991, I do not think that the Anglo-American empire will dismantle itself as peacefully. I think that when they have the feeling that they are at the point of demise, exactly what Scott was pointing to, the danger of the use of nuclear weapons becomes the most acute.
So therefore, the question is, what can we do under the circumstances? The main problem we have is that the masses of people in the collective West, which is not so collective anymore, are either complacent, indifferent, just not informed, or too fearful to act. So, we have to do something which catalyzes emotion in those people. And I think the idea that if everybody contributes, no matter where they come from, let them come from a Catholic background, and there we have a lot to do, because the Catholic churches are not everywhere against the war. …
But in any case, it has to come from the religions, not only the Christian religions, but we should branch out to essentially all religions of goodwill, all people of goodwill. And then at the same time, basically say an ecumenical approach, which stretches the word ecumenical beyond religion, to include people who are concerned with the well-being of humanity. And that happens to include China, for example, because if you look at the record of China in the last 40, 50 years, having transformed 850 million people of their own country from total poverty to now basically being the most wealthy, prosperous country in the world. … Then you have many others. We should think about what method to use. It cannot be violence. It cannot, in any case, add to the already escalated level of violence in the world on all levels, from school shootings to the level of aggressive wars.
So, we need to go back to the theories of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, except that we do not need armed resistance for the reason of nonviolence, which I just mentioned.
But it needs to also appeal to that, and that is what this beautiful nun from Spain said, this internal better quality of man where man is the living image of God, imago viva Dei. Because if we do not evoke that absolute precious element within each human being, which does separate us from all other creatures. People can love their pets, and there’s something very beautiful in pets, but it is only the human being being in the image of God, the Creator, which makes us creative. And that is what is so precious and what is in danger of being trampled upon and eradicated with all this violence, pornography, perversion, and all of these things which are satanic in our present environment.
So, it comes to the question of elevating people, ennobling people, appealing to that which makes them participate in the eternal chain of human generations, where each of us has the absolute obligation to contribute something to make the next generations live more rich and better in wisdom, in creativity, in having access to the beauty of this universe, than the previous generations.
We have to appeal to that love for mankind. I believe that without evoking love for mankind, we will not succeed. So, I can only ask all of the participants and listeners of this discussion, take this letter to Archbishop Wester, get it around, get the program, this time we will have the entire program of the IPC as a video, get it around so that people can listen to the arguments, what we are fighting against, the danger of extinction, the memory of Hiroshima, the parallels in the present, the dangerous situation we are in, the demands of this changing world situation which does require that each of us act and not sit on the fence of history.
So, if everybody would start to become an organizer appealing to the Pope, the Pope would be surrounded by an ever more powerful chorus of voices from Africa, from Latin America, from Europe, from Asia, all demanding that he takes this role. And I’m sure that Putin would react exactly like Khrushchev did. And I think that Xi Jinping would also listen. And I think then we could convince President Trump, who set out in his second term, to bring better relations with Russia and China, that he still could do that. And hopefully, we will move the world into a secure domain.
