On March 16, 2003, with a United Nations Security Council vote looming, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair made a fateful announcement from their summit meeting in the Azores: Saddam Hussein’s time had run out. If the U.N. did not vote to enforce its own demands, the U.S. and U.K. would lead a coalition without U.N. approval. The countdown to war in Iraq had started.

The next day, the Feast of Saint Patrick on the Christian calendar, a world leader took to the airwaves to make a final urgent plea for peace. “War has no certainty, except the certainty of sacrifice,” he said in a hastily arranged video broadcast from his capital. “And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace.”

But this was not a new or surprising message from this man. Four months earlier, on the first Saturday of Advent, this same leader in a radio address implored all listeners to “seek peace in the world. War is the last option for confronting threats.” He hoped and believed, even up to the last hour, that the horror of war could be averted.

His fervent hopes were dashed on March 20, the day the invasion began in force. War would continue to rage even after the defeat of the Iraqi army, with pockets of Baathist insurgents holding out to this day. By any estimate, the war in Iraq has killed thousands, including combatants and civilians, and continues to kill even now.

The leader who loved peace took no satisfaction in having correctly predicted “the certainty of sacrifice,” and never lost hope that the blessings of peace could be secured for the ravaged Middle East. “Our vision is a Middle East where borders are crossed for purposes of trade and commerce, not crossed for the purposes of murder and war,” he announced to a cheering crowd on May 18, 2004, the annual feast day of Pope St. John I. “This vision is within our grasp if we have the faith and the courage and the resolve to achieve it.”

When His Holiness Pope John Paul II was taken from us on April 2, 2005, the cause of peace lost one of its faithful champions. But thankfully, not its only champion. The words quoted above were those of another world leader, another voice of peace, who is still very much with us. His name is George W. Bush, and he is the president of the United States of America.

(You wanna check those quotes? Find them here, here, and here.)