Faiths unite to plan Peace Day festivities

When the United Nations declared Sept. 21 the International Day of Prayer for Peace in 2002, it said the day should be “reminding us that our permanent commitment, above all interests or differences of any kind, is to peace.”

That’s why UNM’s Inter-Religious Council (IRC) is putting aside its differences and working together to bring the Day of Peace to campus, said Andrea Schoeny, campus minister of communications for the UNM Aquinas Newman Center.

“The IRC coming together on this event is a showing that peace is possible between people,” she said.

Today, UN representatives of all religious backgrounds from the IRC will be in tents under the northeast grove near the Duck Pond from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., offering information about the IRC and collecting donations for the Albuquerque Domestic Violence Shelter.
Pastor Anne Morawski of the Lutheran Episcopal Student Movement said the IRC will hold a prayer vigil and pass out IRC brochures for each religious group.

Schoeny said the prayer booth gives students, religious or otherwise, a chance to offer their prayers, thoughts and wishes for peace, and all peace wishes will be strung up between two trees by the Duck Pond.

“It’s important for all people, no matter their religious convictions or ideology, to come together and recognize that peace is something important to the whole human race,” she said.

Catherine Loweree, Aquinas Newman Center’s peer campus minister, said this is the first year students are involved in planning the Day of Peace.

“This is just really fantastic because all the campus ministries are all so close,” she said. “Our campus houses are all right next to each other. We are all churches, and we all work for and toward the same things, and it’s important to have this dialogue with each other.”

Loweree said the IRC is hoping to do just that.
“I hope everyone just takes a moment out of their day to consider how much of a lack of peace there is in the world,” she said. “And what they can do personally to work for peace.”