Recalling the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin called upon Ireland to recommit itself to building peace.
“Ireland has a proud record in international work for peace,” Archbishop Farrell preached in his World Day of Peace homily, delivered at the Church of the Guardian Angels. “Now, in our days, there is a need and opportunity for the Irish State to articulate how this tradition, and the values which underpin it, will be continued in a rapidly changing international situation.”
“It is not enough to invest in defense capacity or to point to how the circumstances of our traditional military neutrality have changed; Ireland’s commitment to promoting a sustainable peace needs a new articulation,” the archbishop continued, as he warned against “dragging the language of faith into political battles or justifying violence in the name of our beliefs.”