A prayer book that reveals the dynamic soul of a new Christian community, The Sant'Egidio Book of Prayer invites readers into Sant'Egidio's spiritual life and into solidarity with its mission of prayer, service, and peacemaking in the world today.

According to America magazine, "The most important Catholic group that you may never have heard of is the Sant'Egidio community." National Catholic Reporter stated that Sant'Egidio has managed "to broker peace accords in war-ravaged countries, pressure the United Nations to pass a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty, and run one of the most successful anti-AIDS programs in sub-Saharan Africa."

Yet for all of its accomplishments, the community of Sant'Egidio sees itself primarily as a group committed to prayer. The Sant'Egidio Book of Prayer brings the community's daily prayer to readers, inviting them into its spiritual life and into solidarity with its mission of service and peacemaking.

John Paul II said to the Community of Sant'Egidio, "Today's world is a land of anguish. The men and women who live in it are afraid one of the other. This fear generates mutual ignorance, hostility and violence. We have to overcome this fear and its sad consequences. Your commitment to universal kinship is meant to build relationships of trust and friendship that may eradicate fear and hostility."

I am very pleased to introduce this prayer book of the Community of Sant'Egidio, an ecclesial movement that I have known for many years. I can recommend this volume heartily. It contains so many of the answers to the most vital questions of our lives, because it moves us all along the journey to that Word who is Life itself.

They exemplify the Blessed Peacemakers of the Sermon on the Mount.

You would have to have been paying close attention to have noticed it mentioned in an editorial in The New York Times in December, giving the movement much credit for the United Nations moratorium on the death penalty, or to have counted the times (three) the organization has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, or to have connected Sant'Egidio to a 1992 peace pact ending a civil war in Mozambique that had raged for more than a decade.

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