VATICAN CITY — Participants at a Vatican conference called Thursday for the Catholic Church to renounce its “just war” doctrine and for Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and “just peace.”
Church teaching has long allowed for “just wars” — the use of force to stop an unjust aggression — as long as certain conditions are met. They include that other peaceful means have been exhausted, that the force is appropriate and won’t produce worse effects, and that there is a reasonable chance for success.
But participants at a conference sponsored by the Vatican’s justice and peace office and Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement, said in a final communique Thursday that too often the doctrine had been used to justify and endorse military action rather than prevent it.
They called for the church to no longer use or teach “just war” theory, for the church to instead develop a new peacemaking framework “consistent with Gospel nonviolence,” and for Francis to articulate it all in a new encyclical.
