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| Peace People |
The following links will take you to profiles of contemporary Christian people who have witnessed to peacemaking during the course of their life.
Click on the names below to download each profile in PDF format (you need Acrobat Reader) and print copies if you so wish.
Martin Luther King - Civil Rights Leader and Peace Campaigner
On 28th August 1963 Martin Luther King addressed 250,000 people, sharing his dream of racial harmony. To be reminded of the work for peace and racial justice of Martin Luther King Jr., visit the BBC page which commemorates the day
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Born in St Radegund, Austria on 20 May 1907. Executed on 9 August 1943 at Brandenburg Prison for his conscientious objection to serving in Hitler's army. Declared "Blessed" by the Catholic Church on 26 October 2007. Writing to his family from prison he said: " These few words are being set down here as they come from my mind and heart. And if I must write them with my hands in chains, I find that much better than if my will were in chains. Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will. God gives so much strength that it is possible to bear any suffering, a strength far stronger than any might of the world. " 2008 Commemoration Plans
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Awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1976 for
her work with the Peace People in Northern Ireland, Mairead has continued
to work on
behalf of peacemaking and nonviolence |
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Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Goldamez was born in 1917 in the town of Cindad Barrios, in the mountains of El Salvador near the border with Honduras. He was murdered on 24 March 1980. " I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me. " These words appeared in a newspaper just two weeks before Archbishop Romero was shot while celebrating the Eucharist. |
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Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915 and converted to Catholicism in his early 20's. He became a Trapist monk in the United States in 1941. In his forties he became increasingly concerned over matters of war and peace - writing many articles, letters and essays from his Monastery in Kentucky. Merton died in 1968 " Christians have got to speak by their actions. Their political action must not be confined to the ballot box. It must be clear and manifest to everybody. It must speak loudly and plainly the Christian truth and it must be prepared to defend that truth with sacrifice, injustice and even imprisonment or death… " |
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Gertrud Luckner was born of a German family in Liverpool in 1900. Returning to Germany in 1931, she was shocked to see the influence of Nazi propoganda and decided to do something about it. Eventually she was arrested and taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp. " I thought: 'You must always comfort them. The only thing I can do is walk the way together with them.' The whole thing had been so terrible - the deportations, one city after another - so that it really did not much matter any more what happened to me. " |
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Matt Robson is a 30 something who found himself at a turning point in his life. In 2003 he went to Israel and Palestine as an Ecumenical Accompanier. " Slowly but surely over the days and weeks I was less and less active, sitting or standing in the background, I hope as a reassurance to both parties… helping to keep the situation calm, helping to allow people to treat each other as human beings despite abnormal circumstances, preventing the tension from boiling over into violence. " |
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Called the Joan of Arc of East Timor, Maria Lourdes Martins Cruz has worked to lead her people in a nonviolent struggle to regain a sense of their own dignity and thus prepare the ground for a new Timor. She firmly believes that “Women cannot wait for men
to change – we
have to get on with our own change |
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In 1960, Peter Benenson became outraged at the unjust treatment
of
two Portugese students. His outrage led to action when he established
a
campaign on their behalf, coining the phrase "Prisoners
of Conscience". " I have lit this candle, in the words of Shakespeare, 'against oblivion' - so that the forgotten prisoners should always be remembered. We work in Amnesty against oblivion. " |
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“Battle of the doves and hawks” - this was the title a Guardian reporter used to describe how four women - Andrea Needham, Joanna Wilson, Lotta Kronlid and Angie Zelter - took matters into their own hands and attempted to stop Britain selling lethal jets to the Indonesian regime. They all believed that “above all else in life, we are called to love and to be human. I can therefore not stand aside and allow the Hawks to be delivered without doing all that is in my power to peacefully resist. I believe that to be silent in this situation is to be complicit with injustice. I pray that what we do today in disarming these planes will be a small ray of hope for our sisters and brothers struggling for peace and justice in East Timor.” |
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Sr Wamuyu Wachira belongs to the Loreto Sisters, a Catholic congregation also known as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM). In a terrible assault on a girls’ secondary school in 1991, boys from a neighbouring school attacked the girls in their dormitory. Nineteen girls died, 71 were raped, and the rest were traumatised. Questioned by the media, the female deputy principal explained: “The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to rape”. This and several other horrifying episodes of violence brought home to Wamuyu the urgent need to develop a strong culture of peace recognising that at times women themselves colluded with violence or abuse. “I believe that peacemaking is at the core of a woman’s heart.” |
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