"Address to UNESCO, on the the award of the UNESCO prize for peace education"

Abstract: On December 17, 1996 Chiara Lubich was awarded the UNESCO prize for peace education in Paris. In her acceptance speech, she presented some of the qualities of dialogue as requirements for the achievement of peace, pointing out the openness towards the others, the pursuit of one’s own neighbor’s good and the proper meaning given to suffering in personal and communitarian life as the conditions for building genuine relationships. The fraternal dimension of relations, capable of generating mutuality and acts of benevolence, is rediscovered within the cooperation among people of goodwill. Chiara Lubich points out the paradigm of unity as the strategic key that allowed various religions and cultures to choose sharing and cultural encounter over conflict and war.