About

Transforming lives, changing the world — education, resources, and action for nonviolent change.

Our Vision

Imagine a world with dignity, justice, and peace for all.

A world with the tools to challenge the spiral of war, poverty and environmental devastation. And a world where we apply these tools to our own lives as well as our larger society. Our mission is to foster a just and peaceful world through nonviolence education, community-building, and action.

Pace e Bene is bringing that world into being one person, one group, one organization at a time.

Pace e Bene’s vision is rooted in the spiritually grounded practice of active nonviolence. For Pace e Bene, nonviolence is an effective principle for social change – and a powerful way of life. For two decades Pace e Bene’s unique approach has been transforming lives and reaching people around the globe. Since its founding in 1989, over 30,000 people have taken 700 Pace e Bene workshops to gain tools for more healthy relationships and to create a new society.

Pace e Bene has offices and associates in Oregon, California, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, Montreal, Canada, Australia and a growing number of partners and trainers in the US and around the world.

Together we work with individuals, organizations, and movements to strengthen their efforts to abolish war, protect human rights, end poverty, challenge injustice, heal the planet and to meet today’s profound spiritual task: to build a more just, peaceful and nonviolent world.

Our Story

Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service: A History

Founded in 1989 by the Franciscan Friars of California, Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service is now an independent, nondenominational 501(c)3 organization.

Pace e Bene’s name derives from St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi who used this phrase in their own time as a form of greeting, which translated from the Italian means “Peace and all good!” So much was expressed by this little phrase: May you have the fullness of well-being, may you be secure and happy; may you not want; may your dignity be respected; may the goodness in your inmost being flourish;

may the world in which we live know this deep peace. It was a blessing, a hope, and a way of acknowledging the sacredness of those whom they encountered.

It is in this spirit that Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service works to mainstream peacemaking that will empower people from all walks of life to prayerfully and relentlessly engage in nonviolent efforts for the well-being of all.