ZAMBOANGA City — A Vatican official has urged Filipino religious leaders to enter places of conflict as peacemakers, carrying what she called the “ointment of peace.”
Sr. Simona Brambilla, prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, delivered the message by video to about 233 religious superiors.
Addressing the second national convention of the Conference of Major Superiors in the Philippines, she drew on the biblical figures Simeon and Anna as models of humble, prophetic witness.
“They are two prophets who do not cry out; they are humble, silent, meek, disarmed and disarming prophets,” Brambilla said.
She said consecrated men and women are called to serve in “a wounded world” where conflict extends beyond battlefields to relationships, communities, families and hearts.
Brambilla urged the religious to recognize these conflicts and enter divided places with the “ointment of peace,” rejecting attitudes that deepen division and echoing Pope Leo XIV’s call for peace to be “disarmed and disarming.”
“To recognize these wars and to enter into these places of conflict with the ointment of peace,” she said.
She described the choice for peace as a kind of spiritual fasting, urging religious to reject whatever contradicts love and comes from division.
“We may decide, with our freedom, supported and enlightened by Grace, to fast from everything that is not peace, that is not love, that does not come from God, and instead to nourish and be nourished by everything that is love, that is God and that is peace,” Brambilla said.
She called on religious communities to make reconciliation part of their daily witness, beginning with the divisions they encounter within their own communities.