As he accepts the ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ award from the Catholic Theological Union, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago warns that “conflicts mediated through screens” risk reducing human lives to “data points rather than persons.”
Vatican News
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, has been awarded the Catholic Theological Union’s ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ award.
In a speech at the prize ceremony on Wednesday evening, the Cardinal quoted Pope Leo XIV’s homily for Palm Sunday this year, in which he said that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
It is unfortunate, the Cardinal noted, that many had responded to the Pope’s remarks by insisting on the importance of just war theory—a response which he said is beginning “to sound less like moral discernment and more like an anxious effort to prove that what is happening might still be just.”
While there is a place for the just war theory, Cardinal Cupich said, such an approach is “the wrong starting point”. The first question we should ask, he stressed, is not “Can this war be justified?” but rather “What does the Gospel demand of us now? What does it mean, concretely, to be peacemakers?”.
Serenity, creativity, sensitivity, skill
With this in mind, the Cardinal turned to consider four conditions for peacebuilding, drawn from Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate: Serenity, creativity, sensitivity, and skill.
Serenity is important, he said, “not because peace ignores conflict, but because it refuses to be ruled by it … Instead of responding within the logic of domination and humiliation, the disciple steps outside that logic altogether.”
Creativity, on the other hand, is required because “conflict cannot simply be absorbed; it must be transformed.” In practice, this means the “hard, patient work of dialogue and negotiation—not as tactics of compromise at any cost, but as moral processes ordered toward justice.”
Sensitivity, Cardinal Cupich said, means “attention to the person, especially the difficult person.” It is easy to speak of human dignity “in the abstract,” he noted, but much harder “to recognize it in those who provoke, oppose, or wound us.” Yet it is precisely this task to which the Gospel calls us.
Sensitivity is becoming ever more difficult, the Cardinal said, due to the growing “gamification” of war: “conflicts mediated through screens, reduced to images, metrics, and strategic abstractions, where human lives risk being perceived as data points rather than persons.”
The final prerequisite for peacebuilding, Cardinal Cupich said, is skill. “We often speak of peace as an aspiration or a feeling,” he noted, “but Pope Francis calls it a craft. It must be learned, practiced, and refined. It requires habits: the discipline to restrain one’s speech, the courage to tell the truth without hatred, the patience to build trust, the willingness to sacrifice one’s own advantage for the sake of justice.”
Pope in Africa: Promoting a ‘culture of peace’
Cardinal Cupich brought his speech to a close by reflecting on Pope Leo’s remarks on peace and war during his recent Apostolic Journey to four African nations.
While there, the Pope “did not enter abstract debates about justified force,” Cardinal Cupich said. Rather, he called for a “culture of peace,” urging leaders to “return to dialogue rather than escalation” and grounding his appeal “not in theory but in human suffering.”
“Once again, like Jesus in proclaiming the Beatitudes, the Holy Father refused to argue at the level many expected,” Cardinal Cupich stressed. “He spoke as a pastor, not a strategist. And so must we.”
