SW News: Pope Francis announced the prayer intention for the month of April and exhorted everyone to pray and work towards a culture that values peace.

The Holy Father urged Christians to pray for a non-violent culture as the Church commemorates the publication of Pacem in Terris by Pope St. John XXIII 60 years ago. The Pope's Global Prayer Network created a film to go along with his prayer intention for April. He recalls in the video that war is madness and beyond reason. “Any war, any armed confrontation, always ends in defeat for all.”

The Holy Father said that living, speaking, and acting without violence is not surrendering, losing, or giving up anything, but aspiring to everything.

The cause of peace and non-violence has been championed by several personalities, including Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and St. Teresa of Calcutta, according to a press statement released alongside the film.

The video also includes black-and-white photos of peace activists and images of the devastation caused by the numerous wars that are currently destroying the planet.

In his Pacem in Terris, John XXIII criticized the negative effects of violence, which sowed seeds of hatred and bloodshed.

Pope Pius XII expressed it in these terms: "Salvation and justice consist not in the uprooting of an outdated system, but in a well-designed policy of development. Hotheadedness was never constructive; it has always destroyed everything. It has inflamed passions, but never assuaged them. It sows seeds of hatred and destruction. Far from bringing about the reconciliation of contending parties, it reduces men and political parties to the necessity of laboriously redoing the work of the past, building on the ruins that disharmony has left in its wake. The warning of Pope Pius XII still rings in our ears: "Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war."