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POPE-PEACEDAY Jul-13-2006 (330 words) xxxi
Vatican announces World Peace Day theme with focus on human dignity
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As the theme for the 2007 World Peace Day, Pope Benedict XVI has chosen: "The Human Person: The Heart of Peace."
The theme reflects the pope's "conviction that respect for the dignity of the human person is an essential condition for peace in the human family," said a July 13 Vatican announcement.
World Peace Day is celebrated Jan. 1 each year. The pope's message for the celebration is released in early December and sent to heads of state around the world.
The Vatican statement on the pope's chosen theme said human dignity is being "threatened by aberrant ideologies, attacked by a distorted use of science and technology, (and) contradicted by widespread incongruent lifestyles."
Human dignity must be promoted and defended, it said, because human dignity "is the seal of God," who created men and women in his likeness; it is "the sign of the common destiny of humanity (and) the foundation of love for God and for one's neighbor."
Peace is threatened when technology makes human life a commodity or "lifestyles that are disordered or contrary to human dignity" lead people to deny that the traditional family is the foundation of a strong society, it said.
"The church's mission is to announce 'The Gospel of Life,' the centrality of the human person in the universe and the love of God for humanity," it said, referring to Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical.
The church's mission includes proclaiming the dignity of each person, the obligation to work for the common good and the need for individual human actions to correspond to "the order impressed by God on the universe," the statement said.
Every offense against a person "is a threat to peace," it said. "Every threat to peace is an offense against the truth of the person and of God. The human person is the heart of peace."
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Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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