SALT LAKE CITY — "All Catholics and all Christians are called to work for peace and justice," said Jesuit Father John Dear. Fr. Dear will speak at Saint Ambrose Parish, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. Saint Ambrose Parish is located at 1975 South 2300 East, Salt Lake City. Fr. Dear is constantly on the road traveling across the United States speaking on peace and justice. He is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. A Jesuit priest, pastor, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, and retreat leader, he is the author/editor of 25 books, including his autobiography, "A Persistent Peace." In 2008, Fr. Dear was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. From 1998 until December 2000, he served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, he served as a Red Cross chaplain, and became one of the coordinators of the chaplain program at the Family Assistance Center. He worked with some 1,500 family members who lost loved ones, as well as hundreds of firefighters and police officers, while at the same time, he spoke out against the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. From 2002-2004, he served as pastor of several parishes in northeastern New Mexico. He co-founded Pax Christi New Mexico and works on a nonviolent campaign to disarm Los Alamos. These days, he lectures to tens of thousands of people each year in churches and schools across the country and the world. He also writes a weekly column for the "National Catholic Reporter" at www.ncrcafe.org. "We now live in a world of terrible violence – 30 wars, billions of people in poverty, tens of thousands nuclear weapons, and global warming. And yet the person we follow – Jesus – is nonviolent. True, we have to become people of nonviolence too." Fr. Dear will talk Sept. 20, about what it will be like more and more for us to become nonviolent like Jesus. He will talk about how can we become more nonviolent to ourselves, more nonviolent in our families, and more nonviolent toward our neighbors, and then to bring our nonviolent Salt Lake City to a nonviolent frontier in a nonviolent world. "I think these things, if you follow nonviolence, means to work for the abolishment of war, poverty, nuclear weapons, and global warming because we have to become more like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, and all the other people of peace and nonviolence. "That is what I will reflect on and I will share my thoughts about my own journey of nonviolence," said Fr. Dear in an interview with the Intermountain Catholic. "I think all of us have to see the rest of our lives as a journey to peace and make a move from violence to nonviolence. And see life as a journey, step-by-step on the road to peace toward a new future. That is the journey of life, the journey of spiritual life. "I think that is what Jesus is calling us to do. Jesus said ?Blessed are the peace makers, they shall be called the sons and daughters of God,'" said Fr. Dear. "People who love our enemies, show peace, show compassion and practice nonviolence, that is the challenge of being Catholic and a Christian." Fr. Dear just turned 50. But, he said when he was in college at Duke University, he decided to leave the church and not believe in God. But then one day he came to his senses, and said of course I believe in God. Then he wanted to give his whole life to God and realized he was called to the priesthood and wanted to become a Jesuit priest. "Before I entered, I went to Israel in 1982, just to go on a private pilgrimage to the Holy Land," said Fr. Dear. "But when I left, Israel invaded Lebanon. During that summer, 60,000 people were killed. I was camping out at Galilee and reading the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes and I saw a whole bunch of jets drop bombs and kill people at the place where Jesus said ?Blessed are the peace makers." "So since 1982, I have decided to dedicate my life to working at ending wars and to re-teach that core fundamental teaching of Jesus," said Fr. Dear. "I saw warfare there at the place where Jesus called us to be nonviolent. "I have traveled the war zones of the world, and I have been arrested 75 times," he said. "I lived all over the world. But my life really changed in 1982, when I saw the reality of war, as I say in my autobiography when I was in Israel. A longtime practitioner and teacher of nonviolence, Fr. Dear has written hundreds of articles and given thousands of talks on nonviolence. His many books include: Living Peace; Put Down Your Sword; Transfiguration; The Questions of Jesus; Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace; Jesus the Rebel; Mohandas Gandhi; Peace Behind Bars: A Journal from Jail; The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence; You Will Be My Witnesses; Disarming the Heart: Toward a Vow of Nonviolence; The Sound of Listening; The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience; Seeds of Nonviolence; Our God Is Nonviolent; and Oscar Romero and the Nonviolent Struggle for Justice. He has edited: The Road to Peace: Writings on Peace and Justice by Henri Nouwen; And the Risen Bread: The Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan, 1957-1997; and The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland: The Writings of Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire. A native of North Carolina, he was arrested on Dec. 7, 1993 at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N. C. for hammering on an F15 nuclear fighter bomber in an effort to "beat swords in plowshares," according to the biblical vision of the prophet Isaiah. Along with activist Philip Berrigan, he spent eight months in North Carolina county jails. Fr. Dear has two masters degrees in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California. "I look forward to coming to Salt Lake City and talking on how we can practice nonviolence in these terrible times of violence," said Fr. Dear. For more information visit www.fatherjohndear.org.
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