While poking around Assagioli’s online archives, searching for the words “peace” and “pace”, I came across an Italian newspaper clipping published precisely fifty years ago on New Years Day. The year was 1974, and this would be the last New Years Day Assagioli would experience as he would die on 23 August that same year at the age of 86.
The article has the headline “Per il Papa ciascuno di noi può contribuire alla pace” (According to the Pope, each of us can contribute to peace) and the text feels especially poignant given all that is happening in the world today. I can just imagine Assagioli in his study, reading through the newspaper and clipping out this article. You can see the paragraphs he marked with a red pencil held in a shaky hand.
The article reiterates what Pope Paolo VI had to say on the Seventh World Day of Peace celebrated by the Catholic Church. Eerily, the first conflict that the Pope refers to fifty years ago was occurring in the Middle East. He then condemns the mafia and laments the general use of force throughout the world.
If we zoom in on what Assagioli considered worth noting, we see that he has marked what the Pope said about the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.
“It might seem to those of us, who are merely spectators, that we can simply say: ‘But it’s so easy…why not just try to understand each other? What does one border mean as opposed to another? What is the value of one thing as opposed to another when compared to the value of peace and of the joy of celebrating brotherhood among mankind and of welding in friendship the relations that need to be forged between nations?’
“The theme of peace is not superfluous, optional, or ornamental, but essential to the life of every person and to their physical and actual safety. Peace is an urgent theme weighing on our destinies.”
We know that Assagioli sought peace – inner and outer – all his life, even to the point of spending four weeks as a prisoner in Regina Coeli jail, in the heart of Rome. On one August night in 1940, he was arrested at his home outside of Florence, handcuffed, placed on a night train for Rome, interrogated, stripped searched, fingerprinted and sentenced indefinitely for “praying for peace and other international crimes.” Once released, he was placed under house arrest and was constantly under surveillance by the fascist government.
It appears that even in his old age – frail, ill of health, and nearly deaf – Assagioli was still praying for peace. The second section that Assagioli marked was Paolo IV’s thoughts on the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The Pope spoke of the nonchalant acceptance of these horrendous acts that occurred thirty years before. He lamented that people were beginning to talk about atomic weapons “as if they were nothing.”
“My God!” the Pope exclaimed. “We’ve almost turned the Japanese episode into a normal occurrence, hopefully an occurrence that will never come to pass, yet one that is not impossible for the people’s fate.”
The article goes onto say:
Our civilization is laden with weapons and “it is necessary for people to procure them otherwise they no longer know whether they will survive or not. The seemingly balanced world is in a tug of war, a balancing of forces. It is fear against fear.”
Let us begin 2024 as Assagioli did fifty years ago during the last year of his life. Let us begin by finding the best way that we too can diminish the fear and contribute to peace – whether through prayer or action, inner spiritual awareness or outer acts of will… Let us demonstrate through our words, thoughts, and lives any and all signs of peace.
As you can see, we haven’t gotten very far in fifty years… As Pope Paolo VI said, “We all need to be true – not false or weak – pacifists. True pacifists like Gandhi and Dr. Albert Schweitzer.” Let’s start 2024 by identifying our ideal model of Peace (There are so many!) and seeking their guidance in the New Year.
For further reading, see Assagioli’s article below.
Love and Will 