The National Commission for Justice and Peace, a lay body within the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, lamented the domestic, regional, and international rise in military spending.
“An unprecedented increase is expected for our country and for the other members of the European Union,” the commission stated on December 29. “This union of states born as an alternative to a past of continuous wars seems to prepare for the inevitability of war. And it does so through deterrence.”
“There are alternatives that serve to build this authentic peace, which certainly does not rest on surrender to injustice,” the commission continued. “This authentic peace is built by the implementation of international law, cooperation between states, the development of peoples, [and] regime changes by peaceful means (changes that recent history also records).”