On the occasion of the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements, held at Spin Time Labs, a delegation of Pax Christi International was also present in Rome from 21 to 24 October, taking part in the encounter with Pope Leo XIV and in the celebration of the Jubilee of Popular Movements.

These days offered participants a deeply enriching opportunity to engage in dialogue and to seek together a renewed global alliance among peoples, the Church, and society, in order to build a humanity founded on fraternity, equality, and justice. The joint work led to the drafting of a final declaration, entitled “Organizing Hope through an Alliance against Exclusion.”

In it, the delegates denounced the severe inequalities that mark our times: more than fifty armed conflicts currently active in the world, an ever more extreme concentration of wealth—with the richest 1% owning more than the rest of humanity—and increasingly precarious forms of labour that leave millions of people without protection. Alongside these social wounds, the Movements recalled the tragedies of migrants in the Mediterranean, the criminalisation of solidarity, and the environmental devastation caused by a predatory economic model.

The gathering with so many organisations engaged daily in the defence of human rights and in the call to Nonviolence represented a powerful new starting point for Pax Christi International, which has long accompanied communities affected by extreme violence in the Global South, on the eve of the World Gathering marking the movement’s 80th anniversary.

We set out once more, inspired by the final message addressed by Pope Leo XIV to the participants: “I am with you,” said the Holy Father, expressing the closeness of a Church united in its support for peace. Also present at the audience was Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (pictured with Martha Inés Romero, Secretary General of Pax Christi International).

Read here the final declaration in English – Italian – Spanish