Thirty Nobel Peace Prize winners, scientists, economists, mayors, doctors, managers, workers, sports champions and ordinary citizens gathered at the Vatican recently for the second World Meeting on Human Fraternity.

The conference was organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation to discuss ways of promoting human fraternity in fields including the environment, education, business, agriculture, media and health.

Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, president of the foundation, introduced the conference’s first discussion, which focused on promoting peace and featured seven Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said that when people disrespect peace and wage war, “they set themselves in a direction diametrically opposed to creation and, by killing their fellow human beings, they not only assault the dignity of others but their own as well.”

The cardinal called for a reconsideration of the concept of “just war,” which he said is “highly problematic” in an age of advanced weapons that can produce “an unlimited number of civilian causalities.”

“We can safely say that all wars, by the mere fact that they contradict human dignity itself, are dynamics not intended by their nature to solve problems, but rather to exacerbate them,” he said.