As the second year of the new millennium draws to a close, the Christmas message of peace on earth and goodwill to man seems a distant, unattainable dream, an almost mocking commentary on man's inability to get on with his fellow men.
As Pope John Paul pointed out in his Christmas Eve sermon in Rome, people all over the world were 'anxious and distressed because of the continuation in various parts of the world of war'.
It is in times like this that we need to believe, if not in the redemptive power of religion, at least in the basic goodness of mankind.
We celebrated the arrival of the millennium in a spirit of optimism, perhaps believing that the world would indeed be a better place in the years to come. The events of the past year have tended to dent this hope.
September 11 illustrated in the starkest possible way the capacity for evil and destruction that lurks in human beings. The war that followed wrought revenge on those who had supported the suicide attacks on New York and Washington, but in the process also brought fresh misery to hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes and now face the prospect of a harsh winter in refugee camps.
Look at what has happened in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, is denied the right to attend a Christmas Eve mass, the latest indication of the intractable violence that has held Israel and Palestine in its grip for five decades. It is impossible for a dispassionate observer to apportion blame solely on one side or the other. What is apparent is that both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered greatly, and that leaders on both sides have proved to be inadequate to the task of building peace.
Other parts of the world, too, seethe with conflicts, large and small. The Indian sub-continent remains troubled, with tension between India and Pakistan, and a simmering civil war in Sri Lanka. Africa is awash with small, barely reported conflicts which have blighted the future of entire generations of people.