Martha Merritt

Seventy members of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network (CPN) from 21 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas convened in July on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, a rich setting for the study of “best practices” in peacebuilding. As Archbishop Fernando Capalla of Davao noted in his welcoming remarks, “The selection of Mindanao for this conference is a tribute to the efforts of the Catholic, Muslim and indigenous communities in finding peaceful solutions to the violence that has caused so much suffering.”

The CPN consists of practitioners, academics, clergy and laity committed to deepening bonds among Catholic peacebuilders and to expanding the capacity of the church in areas of conflict. The CPN has been spearheaded by the Kroc Institute and Catholic Relief Services, with the active involvement of Maryknoll, the Office of International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Center for International Social Development at the Catholic University of America, the Sant’ Egidio Community in the United States, and Pax Christi International. According to Gerard Powers, the Kroc Institute’s director of policy studies and coordinator of the CPN, “The conference confirmed the value of connecting Catholic peacebuilders from different countries, as well as the value of connecting peacebuilders with scholars from the Kroc Institute and other academics specializing in religion and peace.”

Joining Powers at the conference were Kroc Institute faculty members Scott Appleby, John Paul Lederach, Daniel Philpott, and Martha Merritt; and three Kroc M.A. student interns with Catholic Relief Services in Southeast Asia: Burcu Munyas, Sana Farid, and Mwiti Mbuthia. All became acquainted or reunited with Kroc alumni Elias Omondi (’04) and Brenda Fitzpatrick (’04).

At the CPN’s inaugural meeting last year at the University of Notre Dame, 40 participants heard presentations by practitioners on Catholic peacebuilding in the Philippines, central Africa, and Colombia. This second meeting was moved to a site of conflict in order to deepen the links between practitioners and theorists and to privilege the voices of those who contribute to peacebuilding in the Philippines.

Conference participants first broke into small groups to visit areas that experienced violence in the recent past. Some of these sites feature “zones of peace” or “spaces for peace,” civic associations intended to curtail or halt the use of weapons. At the parish of Pikit, for example, community leaders trained at the Grassroots Peace Learning Centre work with the Christians, Moro (Muslim), and indigenous peoples in their region to foster dialogue and, eventually, reconciliation. At another site in the Kidapawan district, religious leaders rebuild houses destroyed in violence. They also spearhead special efforts to show respect for others’ religious holy days, including Christians fasting during Ramadan.

During the most recent flare-up between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the military in 2003, civilians were evacuated to separate shelters based on religious identity, which then left them identifiable as targets for hostile forces and tended to deepen prejudicial views of other groups. The new “spaces for peace” feature frequent and unprecedented contact among local officials and among the populations of barangays (villages). As part of the efforts to identify biases and to assist community relations, Christians and Lumads (indigenous peoples) have made their first visits to Muslim villages, and Moro spend the night in Christian homes.

Attendees returned to Davao City for three days of in-depth presentations about the contours of conflict and peacebuilding on Mindanao. Several presenters focused on the inadequacy of describing the conflict as a religious one. The Rev. Sebastinao D’Ambra portrayed religion not as the “real” divide, but rather as the line along which prejudice had been built. Miriam Suacito focused on the absence of good governance as a major source of conflict in the region. Presenters agreed that the conflict is exacerbated by the lack of a comprehensive government-level peace policy and the widening socio-economic gap between the mostly non-indigenous Christians in Mindanao, and the Moro and the Lumads.

Myla Leguro, Peace and Reconciliation Program Manager for Catholic Relief Services and a 2005 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, highlighted the work of the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) in her presentation. More than 850 peacebuilders from 35 countries have trained at MPI in the six years of its existence. They attend workshops on religious peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and trauma healing, drawing on the shared knowledge of participants and facilitators. The Grassroots Peace Learning Centre is an offshoot of MPI intended to bring similar training specifically to grassroots practitioners in Mindanao. About 200 community and religious leaders have been trained at the center since its founding in 2003.

Other speakers focused on peacebuilding as inevitably political, but intentionally “relational.” The Mindanao Peaceweavers, for example, shared their experience of earning credibility not by pretending to be neutral, but rather by being independent.

John Paul Lederach, Kroc professor of international peacebuilding, called for “platforms for public participation” as part of a strategy of making visible relationships and their resulting interdependence. Lederach drew on the symbolism of spider webs to discuss building a “strategic structure of connections in an unpredictable environment.”

Fr. Peter-John Pearson, director of the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office, and Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute, summarized the conference proceedings and proposed ways forward. Pearson, of South Africa, expressed unease about something specifically “Catholic” in peacebuilding. “The quest is mistaken,” he said, “if the effort is to strip things down to an essence and then claim it as our own.” Rather, working for justice and peace is a “constituent element” of a Catholic identity, not a monopoly but something that must be “deeply within us in order to be Catholic.”

Appleby, a professor of history, described peacebuilding in Mindanao as powerfully Catholic, though not as an “exclusivist or triumphal statement.” He continued, “The real question is not whether peacebuilding is Catholic, but whether the church will claim these peacebuilding practices as Catholic Christian and recognize them as privileged and necessary expressions of contemporary Catholic identity.” Appleby called for the CPN to become an advocate for this recognition, in part by developing a theology of a just peace “attentive to local particularities but encompassing them all.”

At the close of the conference, Bishop John Cummins, liaison to the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, remarked, “I am terribly impressed with the maturity of the dialogue process and the spirit of collaboration we found in Mindanao.”

The third international conference of the CPN is scheduled for 2006 in Burundi, to support the church’s new peacebuilding initiatives there at a critical time in the peace process. The transition to Africa will give members exposure to another set of local peacebuilding practices and a deeper understanding of the webs that draw communities together.

More information on the conference and the Catholic Peacebuilding Network is available at the CPN website at http://cpn.nd.edu

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