Your Excellency, Mr President, Dear brothers and sisters,

two days ago the Latin liturgy invited us to remember all the faithful departed, an occasion to entrust to divine mercy the many victims of the armed conflicts that still bloody the world. The month of November thus invites us to hope. This virtue is undoubtedly the one that will illuminate your reflection during the next two days of your conference on the theme "Peace tested by the world: Eastern Christians, conflicts and peacebuilding".

You have chosen to bring several academic disciplines into dialogue with one another in order to better understand contemporary conflicts and to seek the conditions for a just and lasting peace, particularly in the Middle East.

Over the coming days, I encourage you to work with "a humble heart and as builders of peace" (Address to the Diplomatic Corps, 9 January 2026). Dialogue between philosophy and the other disciplines makes it possible to rediscover the meaning of the words and concepts we use, which is probably one of the principal challenges of our time (ibid.).

In this sense, it is a happy thing that through this conference you are initiating the emergence of an international network of academics who make peace an object of research. Dialogue between faith and reason, culture and history is the indispensable path to justice and reconciliation. Thus, by reflecting on the criteria for a just and enduring peace, especially in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, you become servants of an unarmed and disarming peace, humble and persevering. Be, then, sowers of hope through your reflection and your action, keeping the humility that the Gospel teaches us: "one sows and another reaps" (Jn 4:37).

May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace and Seat of Wisdom, intercede with her Son that his reign of peace may come, and may she accompany your reflection in these coming days.

Thank you.