As its very name indicates, it continues to spread terror among citizens all over the world, regardless of their nation or personal culture. It involves obliging people to experience a latent threat that at any moment can be expressed by an unforeseeable event due to the kind of action it involves: bombs, kidnappings, chemical attacks, viruses, extortions, suicide attacks that cause victims in an indiscriminate manner, etc.

The reasons for all this are also multiple ones: religious, ideological, equal term issues, fascists, left-wing or right-wing, or more simply just to create chaos and political instability in a nation or a State; profitable businesses develop around terrorism in fact, such as arms dealing, drugs, forced migrations, with a consequent division of territories in which to exert power.

While in the recent past a number of totalitarian regimes have managed in their intent to control these manifestations – at least to a certain extent – through their iron strong secret service apparatus and the repression of their respective states, at the moment there is practically no nation on earth that is not exposed to this phenomenon.

It is a fact that the representatives of nations feel called upon to fight against this scourge in a united manner, supporting each other and also through international political organisations for control, but it is also known that there are nations and governments that for ideological reasons secretly support terrorism so as to pursue their own ideological objectives.

In these actions taken so as to contrast terrorism it is essential to have a super-national vision and not to only protect the interest of one’s own nation, but rather the weal of the international community; otherwise the remedy adopted could turn out to be a means for repressing populations and the authentic exercising of democracy and should this be the case, another form of terrorism would apparently be justified and we would see a never-ending crescendo of terror, just as is taking place in the Middle east at the moment.

Not allowing the free development of populations within a democratic framework encourages the appearance of forms of terrorism used by supporters of independent movements, but so-called "State terrorism" also exists, exercised precisely by repressive apparatuses with the objective of maintaining chaotic situations within nations and thereby justifying the existence of repressive apparatuses in question in the same States, in addition to unjustly remaining in power in some cases.

The Holy Father has made repeated appeals for the ending of these violent manifestations against the dignity of human beings, which in many cases deprive them of the fundamental gift of life that has been bestowed upon us by the Creator, and also through many mutilations – physical or psychological – that emarginated people from democratic participation and the free and adequate exercising of their functions. The Bishop of Rome has appealed in particular for the different religions to abstain from using the name of their divinity as an excuse for justifying indiscriminate attacks on human life, since it is absurd to proclaim that a divinity is against the dignity of each human being.

During the "purification of the memory", John Paul II has stated that the Church has already experienced painful events in the course of its history, having followed the route of religious wars, for which it has asked for forgiveness, but with simplicity offers its experience so that these mistakes should not be repeated. The God of life does not love death: He wishes man to live, and live fully!

It is therefore necessary to strengthen the international bodies who must create and organise means of controlling, must pursue, judge and carry out sentences against the organisations and persons who exercise terrorism in any nations, because one runs the risk that, protected from national courts, justice is ignored and impunity triumphs under the protection of governments that protect terrorists under the umbrella of their own ideologies.

To propitiate a fair international order that will also provide an opportunity, in all senses, for the citizens of all nations, respecting the fundamental rights set out by the United Nations Magna Carta would certainly encourage a reduction of these actions.