Pax Christi Finances 2024
The accounts for the year ended 31 December 2024 show a total income of £265,604. Our expenditure totalled £227,909 which represents a healthy surplus of £37,695 where we had originally budgeted for a deficit. This means that our total funds at the end to the year were £656,153 (£618,458 in 2023).
Our main sources of regular income were Peace Sunday donations and membership subscriptions. These were again supplemented by significant legacy income and we remain grateful for the generosity of those members who have remembered us in their wills. Our main item of expenditure, typical for an organisation of our size and nature, was staff costs.
As I reported at our AGM in 2024, we remain in a strong financial position but must remain cautious. The Executive Committee have agreed another deficit budget for this year, which we are able to do because of the funds we are holding. We are undertaking an organisational review to ensure that the structure of Pax Christi makes effective and sustainable use of our resources in pursuit of peace.
Copies of our full 2024 accounts are available to download from our website or on request to members by post or email.
Matt Jeziorski, Hon. Treasurer
A major donor wrote to us:
I was primarily inspired to donate by a presentation on your work in the Occupied Territories. Pax Christi volunteers lived for six months in Palestinian homes, among other activities escorting children to school. If I were thirty years younger, it is the sort of work I would have loved to do. Justice demands that we support the Palestinians. It is a privilege to be able to support Pax Christi E & W financially.
Pax Christi Annual Report 2024-2025
Below: Mourning the wars across the globe: one of the many vigils of prayer for Palestine, supported by Pax Christi, that have taken place this year, both in person and online.
Pax Christi, St Joseph’s, Watford Way, London NW4 4TY 020 8203 4884 info@paxchristi.org.uk www.paxchristi.org.uk instagram.com/paxchristi_/ facebook.com/PaxChristiEW
We celebrate 80 years of our shared history and development into an international movement for nonviolence which has helped to shape history (as in Northern Ireland) and has given purpose and meaning to many of our members. It is also a time to mourn, as we lament the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wars across the globe, and a failure to explore nonviolent alternatives to conventional and nuclear re-armament. Meanwhile, many have stopped reading the news or watching TV because they are too depressed by witnessing genocide in Palestine and the breakdown of international order.
We ask ourselves: what is the role of a faith-based peace movement in our time? We need to discern how to respond to these challenges, as individuals and a movement, and I think this requires a shared commitment to prayer and to new thinking, while drawing deeply on our roots. As part of this, we held an Away Day on 8 March with our Vice-Presidents, staff and members of the Executive.
At the 2024 AGM I heard a strong call from members for us to develop as a community. Yet, I have to confess that, as a new Chair, with a
majority of new members on the Exec, much of my time this year has been spent on learning the practicalities of the job. I am very grateful for all who have worked so hard to sustain our peace making: our CEO Andrew Jackson, Sister Katrina Alton, our Chaplain, Vice–Presidents, Executive members, staff, working groups and volunteers.
As a member of the Merseyside group, I am aware of the importance of ‘circles of support’ in order to ‘get involved and stay involved.’ Working with our staff and Executive, I wish to take steps to connect better with our members, both on Zoom and in person, being mindful of our shared DNA: ‘prayer, study and action’. A small step would be for each of us to commit to saying the Pax Christi Daily Prayer.
Kathryn Lydon Chair of Pax Christi England & Wales
Staff: Andrew Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, Fausta Valentine, Administration & Finance Manager Aisling Griffin, Schools & Youth Education Officer
Pax Christi Executive Committee and Staff
President: Bishop Philip Moger (to be confirmed) Chair: Kathryn Lydon, Vice-Chair: vacant Treasurer: Matt Jeziorski, National Chaplain: Sr Katrina Alton, with Lauri Clarke, Arn Dekker, Lucy Irven, Maria Lee, Susan Sanderson and Sr Lucia McGuckin.
Key Consultant: Valerie Flessati, Editor. Office volunteers: Guy Asaert, William Asaert, Derek Barretto, Mary Boley, Helga Calloway, Lauri Clarke, Monika Cleaver, Nuala Flynn, Rebecca McLoughlin, Peter McNamara, Jo O’Brien, Ed Tierney.
2025 is a year for Pax Christi to both celebrate and to mourn.
Left: Kathryn Lydon, Fausta Valentine, Martha Inés Romero, International Secretary General, Aisling Griffin, and Andrew Jackson.
Highlights of our work 2024
We organised Ash Wednesday services of repentance and peace on the streets of Leeds (above) and Liverpool (right), London and Coventry.
Left: Pax Christi supports International Conscientious Objectors’ Day ceremonies in Liverpool, London, and other locations on 15 May each year.
Below: Peace walkers outside Westminster Cathedral on the International Day of Nonviolence, 2 October, Gandhi’s birthday
Nonviolence
Active nonviolence as a route to just peace is not just a campaign issue for us but is foundational to all our work.
As we prepare this report, just over 25 members have registered for our Lent online book club, studying John Dear’s book The Nonviolent Life.
Each Autumn we mark the Catholic Nonviolence Days of Action. In 2024, we started with an online event giving an opportunity to renew a Vow of Nonviolence (which we now have available as a prayer card). We finished with peace walks in London and Liverpool. In London, we delivered letters to government departments urging them to adopt nonviolent strategies in resolving conflict. In Liverpool, a letter was delivered to the Merseyside Pension Fund asking it to divest from investment in companies supplying arms to Israel.
Speaking to churches and groups on nonviolence is an important part of our work. At the National Justice and Peace Network’s conference in July, we ran a workshop on Pope Francis’ message ‘Nonviolence: a new style of politics for peace’. In October, we led a day on ‘Living the Nonviolent Gospel’ for JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation) Links – a network of religious congregations. At the launch of Pax Christi’s Catholic Nonviolence Institute in Rome, Pat Gaffney, one of our Vice-Presidents, spoke at a webinar on ‘Managing Conflict’.
The horrific attack on young children in Southport in July raised the issue of violence in our own communities. We held an online prayer event as a response, praying for peace in our towns and cities.
Palestine and Israel
Our work on Palestine and Israel focuses on solidarity with everyone seeking a just peace in the Middle East and on campaigning and advocacy.
In the UK, the supply of arms to Israel is an ongoing issue. In February, we joined a Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) initiative and co-signed a global letter calling on partner countries to the F-35 jet programme to halt all arms transfers to Israel. As the new Labour Government took office, we updated our template letter for members to use to write to their MPs to demand an end to all direct and indirect arms transfers.
In May, Pax Christi members in Coventry protested outside the City Council AGM demanding an end to investment in arms companies supplying Israel, and in November Sr Katrina Alton and Andrew Jackson joined protesters outside the arms fair in Telford where those companies were exhibiting.
Over the year, members took part in the regular ‘Ceasefire Now’ marches for Palestine in London, Liverpool and Leeds.
We marked the World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel with a powerful online event ‘Christians in Gaza’.
Disarmament and Nuclear Weapons
We continued our participation with a number of groups including the Pax Christi International working group on Nuclear Disarmament and the Scrap Weapons Impact Coalition, campaigning for a long overdue UN Special Session on Disarmament.
In May, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales published Called to be Peacemakers: a Catholic approach to arms control and disarmament. We welcomed the document and continue to be involved in discussions on building on it whilst also using it in our own campaigns. In October, Aisling Griffin spoke on our work at the Archdiocese of Birmingham Justice and Peace Assembly which had taken the document as its theme.
Pax Christi members had an organising role in Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations in Abingdon, Liverpool, London and St Alban’s. In June, Fausta Valentine and Fr Joe Ryan were privileged to meet Japanese survivors of the bombings who visited London on the ‘Peace Boat’ for an event supported by Pax Christi and other peace organisations.
Having formed a coalition of French and UK peace organisations in 2023, we joined with Pax Christi France and that coalition in a public declaration to mark the November anniversary of the Nuclear Co-operation Treaties signed by the two countries in 2010. The declaration urged the governments of each country to make more progress with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to engage with the TPNW process (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) .
Peace Education
Some highlights from the year were the 19 days in schools, including holding a stall for a school Mission Day and being part of a reflection day, thanks to a member putting us in touch with the school chaplain. We've delivered a wide variety workshops and talks on the work of Pax Christi, human security and conflict and violence. We joined colleagues from the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation at ‘Invocation’, a day for young people as part of the Adoremus Eucharistic Congress.
We’ve had stalls at three events for teachers, firstly at the Birmingham Diocesan Education Service Leadership Conference in May, a conference looking at Catholic Social Teaching for school staff in the Liverpool diocese and as part of the annual conference of the Association of Teachers of Catholic Religious Education. These are wonderful opportunities to meet teachers and share our work, as well as learn more about how we can support teachers and chaplains. We were also thrilled to deliver a session on our work and the new Religious Education
Directory to Secondary RE Early Career Teachers in the Birmingham Diocese.
We produced our annual resources for the Catholic Nonviolence Days of Action and Peace Sunday, which are available from our website.
Pax Christi International is 80
March 2025 saw the 80th anniversary of the founding of Pax Christi International. Andrew Jackson represented us at a ceremony in Brussels launching a year of celebrations. Shortly before that, we were privileged to host Martha Inés Romero, Secretary General of Pax Christi International. In London Martha Inés had time with our core team and inspired us during an afternoon for members and supporters where she spoke about her life’s work in justice and peace, in her home country of Colombia and internationally.
Pax Christi volunteers mailing the Annual Report to you last year
In September an anniversary edition marked 50 years of Justpeace, with articles drawn from each decade since 1974 . Copies are still available from the office.
Hiroshima Day commemoration in St Alban
