Pope Benedict XVI's message for the 2007 World Peace Day, which is celebrated every year on January 1, reflected the Pope's "conviction that respect for the dignity of the human person is an essential condition for peace in the human family".

The human person is at the heart of the Church's social teaching. So it was no surprise that in the message, which was entitled 'The Human Person: The Heart of Peace', the Pope said that human dignity is being "threatened by aberrant ideologies, attacked by a distorted use of science and technology, (and) contradicted by widespread incongruent lifestyles" that are propagated by secularists as signs of progress but that always turn out to be oppressive.

Human dignity must be promoted and defended, the Pope said, because human dignity "is the seal of God" who created men and women in His likeness. Human dignity is also "the sign of the common destiny of humanity (and) the foundation of love for God and for one's neighbour".

The message explained how technology and science threaten peace. This happens when technology makes human life a commodity. Another threat to human dignity takes the form of "lifestyles that are disordered or contrary to human dignity".

Among the victims of these distorted lifestyles is the family. People who are blinded by these lifestyles deny that the traditional family is the foundation of a strong society. The Pope's stated that the Church's mission includes proclaiming the dignity of each person. It also proclaims the obligation to work for the common good and the need for individual human actions to correspond to "the order impressed by God on the universe".

Every person is very important in the eyes of the Church, so much so that the Pope states that an offence against a person "is a threat to peace", he said. "Every threat to peace is an offence against the truth of the person and of God. The human person is the heart of peace."