January 1st – World Day of Peace

O World Peace Day is a commemorative date celebrated worldwide on the first day of the year, the January 1st. It was proposed by Pope Paul VI in 1967 and celebrated for the first time in 1968. The date aims to promote efforts for nations to engage in the promotion of world peace.

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When is the World Day of Peace celebrated?

World Peace Day is celebrated on the day January 1st of each year and, as the name suggests, is a universal commemoration that is part of the calendar of many countries. This date was created through a suggestion made by Paul VI, pope of the Catholic Church between 1963 and 1978.

World Peace Day is celebrated annually on January 1st.

Here in Brazil, World Peace Day coincides with another celebration that seeks to promote the unity of humanity: the Universal Fellowship Day. This commemorative date has even been considered a national holiday since the 1930s, when Getulio Vargas stipulated the day as a holiday "dedicated to the commemoration of universal brotherhood"|1|.

When was the World Day of Peace created?

The World Day of Peace was first celebrated on January 1, 1968 by the Catholic Church. The date was proposed by Pope Paul VI in December 1967, and the intention was to symbolically dedicate the first day of the year to peacekeeping around the world. The proposal was not intended to create an exclusively Catholic celebration, but rather one that embraced all faiths and peoples.

The date was intended to promote a feeling of peace and unity among peoples, especially because of the context in which it arose. In the 1960s, the planet was experiencing the height of tension caused by the polarization of Cold War. THE racearmamentist and the threat of nuclear war between Soviets and Americans, for example, they served as an inspiration for the ideas of peace to gain strength.

Pope Paul VI was the originator of the World Day of Peace at the end of 1967.[1]

As mentioned, the first celebration of this commemorative date took place in January 1968 and in it Paul VI already expressed his intention:

The proposal to dedicate the first day of the new year to Peace does not claim to be qualified as exclusively ours, religious or Catholic. Rather, it would be to wish her to find the adhesion of all the true friends of Peace, as if it were an initiative of her own|2|.

When we talk about peace in the proposal of Paul VI, we are not talking exclusively about a world without wars, but about the promotion of a world with any lessmisery and less social inequality, a world where everyone has the necessary medical care, food, access to fun and leisure, etc. It is a date that invites people and authorities to reflect on actions that promote peace.

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Ceremonies

In 2020, Pope Francis I addressed the following theme: “Peace as a path of hope: dialogue, reconciliation and ecological conversion”.[2]

Every year the Catholic Church celebrates in the Vatican a ceremony on behalf of the World Day of Peace. This ceremony features a speech by the pontiff and, in each edition, a new theme is addressed. Obviously, the themes always debate ways to promote peace and are pronounced by the pope himself.

The last three themes, announced by Pope Francis I, were as follows:

• 2018 – Migrants and refugees: men and women in search of peace;
• 2019 – Good politics are at the service of Peace;
• 2020 – Peace as a path of hope: dialogue, reconciliation and ecological conversion.

The other three popes to address the World Day of Peace, in addition to Francis I, were Benedict XVI, John Paul II and the creator of the date, Paul VI. Some of the themes addressed by these popes during the 1st of January were the following:

Year	pope	Theme
1968	Paul VI	the day of peace
1969	Paul VI	The promotion of human rights, the path to Peace
1989	John Paul II	To build Peace, respect man's conscience
2004	John Paul II	A commitment that is always up-to-date: Educating for Peace
2008	Benedict XVI	human family: community of peace
2012	Benedict XVI	Educating young people for justice and peace

Grades

|1| Law No. 108, of October 29, 1935. To access, click on here.

|2| Message from His Holiness Pope Paul VI for the celebration of the First World Day of Peace. To access, click on here.

Image credits

[1] Olga Popova and Shutterstock

[2] Riccardo De Luca - Update and Shutterstock