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Abstract

This brief survey takes a historical perspective on the role of Catholic bishops in global peacemaking. Building on my previous work 1 and more recent research, it focuses on the roles of bishop as teacher, ruler, and minister of the sacraments and on the interplay between prophetic protest and institutional authority. It covers the origins of the bishop’s office, the development o f prophetic protest and rule in episcopal peacemaking in the early church and Middle Ages, including the Peace and Truce of God. It then turns to early modern peacemaking and the influence of humanist thinkers on Latin American missionary bishops, including Bartolomé de Las Casas. For the modern world it discusses the Catholic bishops’ response to communism, Nazism, and World War II, the bishops’ role in post war Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the USA, and concludes with recent US bishops’ thought and action on peace.

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