Pope Francis' Message for the World Day of Peace 2025

The Message of Pope Francis for the 58th World Day of Peace, on the theme ‘Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace’, is now public.

For the World Day of Peace, which falls every 1 January, the Holy Father addresses a Message of good wishes and hope to Heads of State and Government, Heads of International Organisations, Leaders of different religions and every person of good will.

Hope, which also characterises the Jubilee Year, is the preponderant theme of this 58th Message. Pope Francis invites us to look at the many challenges that severely endanger the survival of humanity and Creation with a heart full of hope.

To do this, it is necessary to rely on God's mercy. By His forgiving our debts, we will rediscover ourselves all children of the Father, and therefore all brothers and sisters, united on the path of peace. 

More concretely, then, Pope Francis recommends three actions that can truly mark a path of peace: the forgiveness of the international debt; the abolition of the death penalty; the establishment of a World Fund that will definitively eliminate hunger.  

At the Holy See Press Office, the presentation of Pope Francis' Message for the World Day of Peace 2025 was held.

Opening the conference was His Eminence Card. Michael Czerny SJ, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DSSUI). In his address, Card. Czerny emphasised the contextuality of the Message with the Jubilee, which he called ‘a propitious occasion to strengthen our faith’, and to remind us that the power of the Holy Spirit and God's Mercy will lead us to salvation. 

This does not mean we must wait passively. But hope, the Prefect explains, translates into attentiveness in listening to God's voice and responsibility for the injustices that shackle our lives. By disarming the heart, we will be able to ‘act in goodness and for unity'. 

The next speaker was Dr. Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, Executive Director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), who emphasised how, with his Message, the Holy Father calls us to be bearers of God's merciful justice in the world.

Krisanne then turned to Francis' call for the abolition of the death penalty in all nations, which is also the mission of CMN, which is committed to mobilising Catholics and all people of good will to end the death penalty in the United States. The death penalty is a 'structural sin' that exists in at least 55 countries around the world, where nearly 28,000 people are on death row," she explained. 

The director then shared the testimony of a family who chose the path of forgiveness and fought to save their daughter's killer from the death penalty. Their mercy is an example of personal commitment in the search for peace.

The engineer, Vito Alfieri Fontana, concluded the presentations. After a past in the production of armaments, he experienced a personal conversion and, having left his job, became an activist in the ‘International Campaign to Ban Landmines’. His is the honest testimony of a man who did not ask himself too many questions: ‘When I was an arms manufacturer, I thought that war was innate in the human soul’.

Then his children and the closeness of the Venerable Don Tonino Bello led him to reflect and choose another path: ‘I changed my life by trying to find a minimal remedy for the “before”’. And with reference to the words of the Holy Father on the cancellation of international debt, he calls us to reflect: ‘What debts can populations affected by war, famine and exploitation have towards the rest of the world?’

The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development is committed to spreading and promoting the Message for the World Day of Peace 2025 by Pope Francis. We invite you to follow our communication campaign on the various social platforms and to visit our website to download all the support material that will be published later.