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F. Famularo: Address to Peace Summit 2023, Session II-A
Written by Franco Famularo, President, UPF-Canada; IAPP Canada
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Address to Peace Summit 2023
May 2-5, 2023
Good afternoon, everyone. It’s great to be here. Excellencies, brothers and sisters. We’re glad to have this opportunity to share about the work of the Universal Peace Federation in Canada and globally. There are bilingual PowerPoints in Canada. We have to respect both official languages. For those of you who are from French-speaking countries, you’ll have it easier to follow.
As you know, we have communities all over the world, and many people ask, how is it possible to gather people from so many different backgrounds? I want to start with a quote from Reverend Moon from the time of the founding of UPF in 2005: “Why must we continue this insane barbarism, pouring countless dollars into wars that do not accomplish anything more than death? Now’s the time, as the Prophet Isaiah taught, to beat our swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Humankind should end the perverse cycle of sacrificing our children’s lives and squandering astronomical sums of money to fight wars only for the sake of war. The time has come for the countries of the world to pour out their resources to advance toward the world of peace desired by God, the master of this great universe.”
That was 2005. We’re still a ways away from the world of peace that Dr. Moon proposed. The Ambassadors for Peace program, as well as the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace, is based on universal principles. In Canada, our population is almost 40 million, thanks to a lot of immigration. Last year, we welcomed 500,000 people. It’s a G-7 country, as you know, with racial and cultural diversity. It’s bilingual. It’s got large immigrant communities. In Toronto and Vancouver, more than 50% of the population is now foreign born. Our country is considered to have a safe environment.
Now, what UPF does and offers to our communities in Canada is a new paradigm for peace, with goals and ideals that are oriented towards universally shared values, interdependence, mutual prosperity, one family or one holy community under God. Thus, we propose the ideals of the divine, the ultimate, the common origin that religion and spirituality have. Faith-based organizations definitely have a place in our society. Good governance and the rule of law are important. We emphasize strong social capital based on good social institutions where marriage, family, schools, culture, art, sports associations of different kinds are important to the well-being of our society.
What are these universal principles? They’re applicable everywhere. It allows everyone to understand and establish a common ground of understanding. What we’ve done is we’ve distilled the teachings of the major religions to five core principles. Whether you’re a person of conscience, whether you believe in God or not, or whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, basically, these principles are applicable to everyone.
These are the five principles:
1. We’re one family created by God, the ultimate reality, but at least we have a common origin. 2. The highest qualities of human beings are spiritual and moral.
3. The family is the school of love.
4. Living for the sake of others enables reconciliation of the divided human family.
5. Peace comes through cooperation beyond ethnicity, religion and nationality.
That’s why this kind of gathering is possible, because our activists, our volunteers all over the world actually live by these principles, principles that basically anybody of good nature can accept. The first principle is that we’re one human family, regardless of what you call God.
Second, that we’re spiritual beings and moral beings. We’re not just material, we’re not just a piece of matter. We have desires beyond that. We want to make a difference in society. We want to realize our potential and develop our character. We want to build loving relationships and family bonds.
Third, the family is the school of love. It bridges cultures, it supports peaceful nations, and is the basis for empathy. If we learn hate in our family, we will transmit that in everything that we do. If we learn love, we’ll continue to expand that throughout our lives.
Principle number four: altruism—that living for the sake of others is essential, that all men are responsible for one another, as it teaches in the Talmud. Every religion teaches the same: Give and it will be given to you, for the measure you give will be the measure that you receive, as it says in the New Testament. And the Holy Quran teaches the same. Give not with the thought of gain and be patient unto thy Lord. I could quote from every major religion because they teach the same.
Principle number five is that peace comes through cooperation beyond the boundaries of ethnicity, religion and nationality.
This is the basis of our UPF activity. The power of the human spirit is that the highest expression of love for others is the commitment to loving your enemy. This is what is taught in all the major teachings of the scriptures. Martin Luther King put it well: “We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of the enmity.” And that’s what we should all do.
So what do Ambassadors for Peace do? They promote moral education for youth, strengthen marriage and the family, foster interreligious and intercultural unity. These are the five principles.
Now I have a few more seconds to speak about what we do in Canada. We collaborate. We collaborate with other regions in the world—Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the USA, Asia. Just recently we did a program with Congo between Quebec and Congo on the issue of the importance of religious collaboration beyond our differences. This was done hybrid Kinshasa-Montreal. We did programs with the Middle East, and the United States. Here you see Honorable Newt Gingrich, Hon. Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister of Israel and others speaking on the Middle East effort for the Abraham Accords. We had high-level briefings in the Parliament of Canada to promote an understanding of the issues of North Korea. That expanded into webinars, where we find people who have experienced life in North Korea and more. We just did one a few weeks ago.
Here on this slide are some of the speakers at some of our events from all different parties—liberals, conservatives, and other extremes, right? And our Ambassadors for Peace are people like Gene Augustine, the first black member of Parliament in Canada; Margaret Best, yet another member of provincial parliament; the Honorable Stephen Harper, who attended many of our events and has been speaking alongside many of the great leaders of the world for peace and goodness.
We emphasize collaboration with different ethnic groups in Canada. Our chairman, Dr. Kim, has been emphasizing collaboration with the Chinese community, the Filipino community, the Sri Lankan community. And because Canada is that kind of country, we can do this based on these values.
Here’s the Peace Road activity, bike riding for peace. We’ve done work with the Korean community in Canada through supporting the veterans of the Korean War and we had an Ambassador for Peace banquet where we gathered those veterans. Especially since the pandemic where rules in Canada were quite strict, this was our first gathering in October where Dr. Walsh, the chair of UPF International, attended and spoke to a large gathering of our Ambassadors for Peace.
We continue our work, and we look forward to more collaboration in each of the associations and especially in the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace. Their principles—spiritual, fundamental principles—are applicable in every area of life. Therefore, I pray that you can all adapt these common principles that we are sharing in our efforts to promote global peace. Thank you very much and God bless you.
To go to the Peace Summit 2023 Schedule page, click here.