Rome is well known as the headquarters of the Catholic Church and the environs of Vatican City. But it also is home to a cadre of lesser-known but influential Catholic organizations engaged in global peacebuilding work.
Notre Dame undergraduates who took the course “Catholic Approaches to War and Peace: the View from Rome” spent three weeks in the Eternal City learning about and meeting with these groups while based at Notre Dame Rome.
Created and taught by Keough School of Global Affairs professor Jerry Powers, the class introduces students to the Catholic Church’s on-the-ground work, its rich intellectual tradition of peace scholarship, and its role in international diplomacy.
“What really struck me was the opportunity to meet the actual people who are making peacebuilding happen,” said Lucy Carrier-Pilkington, a student in the course. “The theory aspect — the Catholic social teaching and the just war theory, for example — was fascinating, but the opportunity to see how that theory is practiced in real life was something special. I recommend this course to anyone interested in global affairs, politics, and theology — it was phenomenal.”
During one class session which took place in Rome’s vibrant Trastevere neighborhood, students toured the central offices and church of the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic organization dedicated to prayer, peace, and the alleviation of poverty. Sant’Egidio operates soup kitchens and homeless shelters around the world, and its diplomatic arm has played a pivotal role facilitating peace processes in Mozambique, Algeria, Uganda and most recently, South Sudan.
Notre Dame alum Elizabeth Boyle (BA ‘20, MGA ‘23), an international relations officer at Sant’Egidio and a vice president for peace initiatives and research at the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue, offered students an overview of the community’s work.
Students also learned about the peacebuilding role of the Holy See — the central government of the Catholic Church — meeting with Cardinal Peter Turkson, chancellor of the Pontifical Academies for Sciences and Social Sciences, in his Vatican office. In a meeting with Ambassador Andrii Yurash, the Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See, students engaged in discussion about the Catholic Church’s role in the war in Ukraine.
At the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a Vatican department that addresses a variety of social issues ranging from migration to human rights, students discussed the role of the Holy See in supporting the peacebuilding efforts of national and regional episcopal conferences around the world. For an interfaith perspective, Powers brought his students to meet with Cenap Aydin, a Muslim scholar from the group Religions for Peace, who spoke about the role of the Catholic Church in interreligious peacebuilding. Finally, at the headquarters of Caritas Internationalis, a network of 162 national Catholic relief and development agencies working across the world, Caritas staff shared insights on the role of women in peacebuilding, development and humanitarian aid.
“While lived Catholic peacebuilding is most obvious amid conflicts in places like Colombia, Congo, South Sudan and Ukraine, Rome offers a global perspective on the Church’s teaching and action related to peace,” said Powers, a core faculty member of the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and director of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network.
“This course gives students a rare opportunity to engage with leaders of the world’s largest religious institution who are working to ensure the Catholic community lives out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It opens their eyes to a part of the Church that few people see.”