Berkley Center

“Peace is always possible.”

“People of faith must not only be spectators of life but wardens of history.”

“Now is the time to be dare to carve out paths to peace.”

Since 1986, the Community of Sant’Egidio has hosted an annual gathering of religious leaders and representatives dedicated to peace, dialogue, and fraternity. Together with representatives from civil society, governments, and social movements, as well as scholars, students, and members of the public, faith actors build a common dialogue about how to cultivate peace locally and globally while also highlighting differences to reinforce the strengths of a multireligious world. Drawing on the teachings, practices, and lived experience of their traditions, they reaffirm the vital roles faith can and must play.

This year’s meeting, “Daring Peace,” was held in Rome from October 26 – 28, 2025. The title captures the urgent need for bold action in a world wounded by violence and war, a theme that would echo across the 20 forums held on topics ranging from migrants and refugees to artificial intelligence, from climate change to nuclear disarmament to the role of faith in peacebuilding and reconciliation processes. Several key themes emerged across the many speeches delivered and conversations held both inside and outside these forums over three days.

Firstly, speakers offered a diagnosis of the intersecting challenges of our times. Even as technology and markets connect the world more than ever, the sense of a common destiny for humankind has grown weaker. Rising ethnic and religious nationalism around the world, coupled with rampant individualism, reflects this fading vision of the common good and a lack of political will to pursue it. Growing fragmentation and enmity within and among religious traditions, reflected in a reduction in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, reflects and fuels this culture of division.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this diagnosis is the rehabilitation of war as an acceptable, even preferable, political strategy. Speaking of a new “age of force,” Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, pointed to the myriad ways in which aggression and violence pervades societies, undermining diplomacy and dialogue, delegitimizing global institutions established to prevent war and promote justice, and poisoning political rhetoric and relationships among everyday people. Toxic political rhetoric demonizes the “other” and justifies the use of force, whether in detaining migrants, tearing down informal settlements, or killing civilians in conflict zones. At the same time, a pervasive atmosphere of fear and pessimism stifles hope and imagination. All too often, in practice, peace is no longer regarded as a worthy political goal, and daring peace becomes too risky an endeavor.

From this sobering backdrop emerged a second theme: a repudiation of the logic of violence, division, and individualism and an insistence upon cultivating a politics and culture of peace, dialogue, and fraternity. Speakers offered up an array of definitions and metaphors for peace: it is a fragile cord that requires protection and strengthening; a calm strength up against the brute strength of aggression; a moral obligation; a daily commitment; a force of history; a disarmament of the heart; and a “punchline against the powers of perdition.” It was also closely tied to the concept of justice, defined by Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar, as “not the victory of one party over another but the victory of man over selfishness.” Peace cannot be separated from justice; in a forum on peacebuilding Tarek Mitri, Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon, reflected how, in the Bible, “justice and peace embrace each other.” In another forum on migration, a teenage girl whose family migrated to Italy from Afghanistan through Sant’Egidio’s Humanitarian Corridors initiative highlighted the many ingredients for peace: “Peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice, respect, unity, and love among people.”

Peace was also closely linked to dialogue and fraternity. If peace is the goal, then dialogue is the method. It is a foil to force and aggression, a cleansing agent in the “air of hatred and ignorance.” Dialogue is practiced not only by diplomats but by everyday people who may differ in beliefs or ideologies but share values. Fraternity requires that these same people not only tolerate but love one another as sisters and brothers. On this point in particular, the language of scripture and faith teachings was particularly evident. Many speakers evoked the memory of Pope Francis, whose 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti argued that fraternity and friendship are integral to building a just, peaceful world. Antonio Spadaro, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, discussed how this fraternity was, in the eyes of Francis, “the only alternative to the apocalypse.”

This acknowledgement of what is at stake in peacebuilding was nowhere more evident than in the witness of Kondo Koko, a peace activist and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. As a young girl in the 1950s, she met one of the pilots of the Enola Gay, who expressed remorse for his role in the bombing. She told him, “If I hate, I shouldn’t hate you. I should hate war itself, which we human beings have caused.”

A third theme was the reaffirmation of the role that faith communities can and must play in building peace and promoting dialogue locally and globally. In an increasingly divided world, religions harness the goodness and the innate desire for connection and love inside each person. Faith leaders must denounce the culture of polarization and focus instead on building common ground that transforms places of worship into “tents of encounter, sanctuaries of reconciliation, oases of peace.” Religious teachings and practices must continue to strengthen individual and community resilience and commitment needed for pursuing peace and dialogue in a divided world. The importance of interfaith dialogue in particular was emphasized, and the personal friendships between faith leaders, such as that between Pope Francis and Ahmed Al-Tayeb, were celebrated.

Fourthly, the extraordinary slate of forums highlighted the many specific issues facing local and global communities, including protection and integration of migrants and refugees, challenges facing Africa’s youth, rampant economic inequality, and the promise and perils of artificial intelligence. These discussions, which featured a mix of religious, political, and civil society leaders, wove together religious and secular language. At one forum, one speaker recommended policies to expand humanitarian visas while another highlighted the many biblical prophets who were themselves migrants. In another forum, a civil society representative advocating for stricter regulation of artificial intelligence was followed by an imam who discussed how learning and creating knowledge is a form of divine worship.

On the final day of the meeting, which coincided with the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Nostra Aetate, an official declaration of the Second Vatican Council on interfaith relations, participants held prayers for peace according to their faith traditions. Christian representatives – Catholic, Orthodox, and protestant – gathered for prayer inside the Colosseum, presided over by Pope Leo XIV. Afterwards, leaders of all faiths jointed together for the closing ceremony under the nearby the Arch of Constantine, where an Appeal for Peace was read out. Th appeal brought together concepts discussed throughout the previous days: the urgent need for a disarmed and disarming peace, the demand to be bold and daring in pursuing it, the insistence that peace is always possible.

As night descended on Rome, the ceremony came to a close with the sign of peace. Religious leaders exchanged handshakes, embraces, and bows as the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah played. Perhaps no other moment better captured the spirit of this gathering: the embrace of different faiths to the music of rejoicing. Next year, these leaders and representatives will meet once more in Assisi to mark the 40th anniversary of the gathering. While the state of the many issues discussed in the conference – war, migration, climate change – will have changed, this sign of peace will remain relevant as ever.