Patsy McGarry Alison Healy
The primate, Archbishop Seán Brady, said yesterday he hoped that as Ireland takes over the EU presidency it "can set out an agenda for peace on the international stage".
Dr Diarmuid Martin, Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, said the Irish presidency came at a "pivotal moment" in the history of the European project.
At a Mass to mark the World Day of Peace in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, Dr Brady said: "I hope that Ireland's pivotal influence over the next six months can refocus world attention on the problems of the developing world, particularly on Africa, which remains a stain on the conscience of the western world."
The Iraq war did not produce any clear winners, he said. "We saw a weakening of the UN and its consensus-building approach to international affairs, in favour of the individual determination of nation-states, prompted by varying complex reasons. As Pope John Paul II points out in his New Year's message today, there is now a temptation to appeal to the law of force over the force of law.Famine and pestilence are real weapons of mass destruction, and a basic cause of instability."
Dr Martin said people looked with hope to the Irish presidency. "The European ideal is an ideal of integration. European responsibility must therefore be one which reaches out to the rest of the world, recognising the reality of global human interdependence and fostering policies for a common future of peace, based on justice, solidarity and ownership by all concerned.
"The dramatic situation of conflict which still scars millions of men, women and children in Africa is perhaps the most blatant example of that inadequacy and of our failure," he said. "I am sure that Ireland will give an even higher priority during its EU presidency to this task of ending violence in Africa and of fostering social and economic growth and the establishment of democratic institutions there."
Looking to "our own fragile peace process" in the North, Dr Brady said inquiries were "legitimate and necessary vehicles to acknowledge the injustices of the past", but he also spoke of "the need for the decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons".