Cardinal Dominique Joseph Mathieu cautions that peace is fragile after the twelve-day war, urging a deeper renewal of hearts before World Peace Day.
Newsroom (30/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) On the eve of World Peace Day, in a reflection sent from Tehran to AsiaNews, Cardinal Dominique Joseph Mathieu, Archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan of the Latins, offered a sobering reminder: the end of the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran “has not dispelled the spectre of renewed hostilities.” The cardinal’s words carry the gravity of one who lives amid the tension. “The question,” he writes, “is not if, but when.”
In 2025, against the backdrop of heightened repression and executions within Iran — more than 1,900 carried out this year, a record according to Iran Human Rights — the call for peace feels both urgent and out of reach. “The belligerents are preparing for the worst,” the cardinal observes, even as ordinary people “want to live in peace, far from the horrors of war.” His message is not merely political but profoundly spiritual: a meditation on how peace must begin within the human heart before it can take root in nations.
Every January 1st, the Church marks the World Day of Peace, instituted in 1968 by St. Paul VI not as a diplomatic plea, but as a spiritual summons. “It places peace not in treaties, but in the heart,” Cardinal Mathieu reflects, “that human heart that only grace can transform and make truly peaceful.” Yet the modern world’s narrative, he warns, too often inverts this logic — replacing transformation with fear. Media and politics feed the perception of threat, fuelling the march toward confrontation and armament. “The narrative thus becomes one of armament, justified in the name of the noble cause of peace,” he writes. The alternative, disarmament, often appears equally hollow when detached from inner renewal.
In his December address to the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV also described “a world wounded by discord, violence and conflict,” where anger and aggression are amplified by digital media and political manipulation. For Cardinal Mathieu, such wounds reveal a spiritual vacuum — an absence of “shalom” and “salam,” the Hebrew and Arabic words for peace that signify not merely the end of fighting, but fullness, harmony, and well-being. “They indicate integrity, prosperity, health, security, and harmony — not only the absence of war, but the presence of a fully realized life.”
Turning to Scripture, the cardinal connects peace to the very origins of creation. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good,” he recalls from Genesis, describing the original harmony between humanity, nature, and the Creator — a balance broken by sin but never forgotten. “Although sin disturbed this peace, humanity has never ceased to desire its return.” To desire peace, he suggests, is to long for creation’s restoration.
In this light, the nativity scene becomes more than a symbol of fragility. The Child in the manger represents Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” the divine presence that blesses and restores. “It is God who creates and maintains shalom,” the cardinal writes. “He is its source, giver and true incarnation.” He points as well to Islam’s divine name As-Salam, “The Source of Peace,” as a mutual sign that faith, when lived authentically, becomes an instrument of reconciliation.
Peace, he insists, “manifests itself outwardly in an ‘unarmed’ way,” disarming hatred and opening hearts to empathy. It moves through borders and languages “like oil,” carried by justice, charity, and conversion. Quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Mathieu reminds the faithful: “Jesus is our peace.”
As the Church prepares once more to mark the World Day of Peace, the cardinal’s reflection closes with a prayer for the only kind of peace that can last — one that transforms words, actions, and lives alike:
“May peace (pax), eirēnē, shalom and salam be real in our hearts, in our communities and in our world.”
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Asianews.it
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