During the homily pronounced in the Vatican Basilica on 1 January 2009, Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, and World Peace Day, Pope Benedict XVI cited Saint Paul and Saint Francis as two champions of peace, built upon a Christian sense of poverty and solidarity.  Here are the Pope’s words:
“We need to strive to establish a ‘virtuous cycle’ between ‘voluntary’ poverty and poverty which has to be ‘resisted’ […] In concrete terms, we have to combat misery in an efficient way.  We have to do what Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians, that is, we should try to ‘create equalities’ by reducing the different level between those who have abundance of goods and waste them, and those who lack even the basic necessities of life.  This means that we have to make a choice in favour of justice and sobriety, choices which oblige us to administer in all wisdom the limited resources of our planet.

When he affirms that Christ “has made us rich through his poverty”, Saint Paul offers an important indication not only on a theological level, but also on a sociological level.  Poverty for him is not an end to itself, but it is the condition to bring about solidarity.  When Francis of Assisi gave away all his belongings, he made a choice of radical witness inspired to him directly by God, but at the same time he showed to all the way of trust in God’s Providence […] The message for us today is that of the poverty of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, which besides becoming an object of adoration for Christians, is also a school of life for all mankind.

This choice teaches us how to combat material and spiritual misery, and that the way to follow is that of solidarity, which moved Jesus to share his condition with our human condition.”