"The CPN is a much-needed way to support the courageous and mostly unheralded efforts of the Church to build peace in war-torn countries from Central Africa to Southern Asia."

Bishop John Ricard
Chairman, U.S. Bishops' International Policy Committee

"The CPN is a space of exchange, encounter and discovery where we help each other understand our peace-work, generated in faith and actualized in history."

Andrea Bartoli
Community of Sant' Egidio,
USA

"CPN is another concrete way of building solidarity among peacebuilders around the world. The energy that it will bring will help us in facing the many difficult challenges of peacebuilding work in our different contexts. My hope is that we are able to bring the same energy eventually to the communities directly affected by war, violence and conflict - creating not only a network of peacebuilders but more imoprtantly a network of communities all over the world."

Myla Leguro
Peace & Reconciliation
Program Manager
CRS-Phillippines

Home > Events> 2008 Conference

Conference on the Future of Catholic Peacebuilding

April 13-15, 2008
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN

Click on the links below for conference information:

Video, Audio and Paper Presentations
Full Conference Program
Conference Sponsors
Purpose, Focus & Rationale
Conference Participants
Photo Gallery
Media Coverage

Since the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ 1983 peace pastoral called for further work on the development of a theology of peace, peacebuilding has received much greater attention in both secular and Church circles.  This conference will showcase and contribute to a larger effort to develop a conceptually coherent, theologically accurate, spiritually enlivening and practically effective approach to Catholic peacebuilding that can begin to match the sophistication of Catholic thinking on the ethics of war and peace.  By peacebuilding we mean a range of topics not addressed by the literature on the ethics of the use of force.  These topics include conflict prevention, conflict management and transformation, and post-conflict reconciliation.  Peacebuilding also focuses not just on the public policies that are a major concern of Catholic social ethics, but also on a range of other actors, relationships and practices at all levels of society that are integral to healing broken societies and building and sustaining a just peace. 

Sponsors 
The conference is sponsored by the Catholic Peacebuilding Network.  Co-sponsors include:

The University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Graduate School, and Program on Catholic Social Traditions;
Catholic Relief Services;
Boston College’s Department of Theology and Center for Human Rights and International Justice;
Catholic Theological Union’s Bernardin Center for Theology and Ministry;
Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs;
The Sargent Shriver Peace Institute;
The University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies;
Washington Theological Union;
The Catholic University of America's Office of the President;
The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute;
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns;
Pax Christi International;
Caritas Internationalis;
The Sant’ Egidio Community in the United States;
Woodstock Theological Center

For further information, please contact:
Gerard F. Powers, Chairman, Catholic Peacebuilding Network Steering Committee (574-631-3765 (phone); gpowers1@nd.edu), or;
Kathy Smarrella, event coordinator, (574-631-9370 (phone); ksmarrel@nd.edu).

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