Tonga, Nuku’alofa, August 30, 2021. After the almost dramatic delivery of our Friend of Peace Decree to Tonga, we are pleased to publish a photograph of His Eminence Cardinal Soane Patita Paini Mafi, our Friend of Peace of the International Tree of Peace project. The consignment with the Decree had to be sent twice, as the first did not reach its addressee due to a very problematic global situation, which also significantly affected postal services. We are all the more pleased that the decree was finally delivered to the laureate of our Honorable recognition.

The Tree of Peace has the ambition of implementation on all Continents. We would also like to link our project with perhaps the most important personality in the history of Slovakia, General Milan Rastislav Štefánik. His scientific journeys and his traces on many, exotic places for Central Europeans are very inspiring. Here, too, we see the penetration of our international project and the planting of Trees of Peace in those parts of the world that can be very well connected with the personality of General Štefánik. In this context, Marek Sobola held several diplomatic meetings in London with the Ambassadors of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga under the auspices of the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in London.

One of the Tongan islands, Vavaʻu, was personally visited by General Štefánik in 1911. To this day, two concrete pylons with his name have been preserved here. Thanks to our Friend of Peace, His Eminence Cardinal Mafi, we already have a declared and confirmed place to plant the Tree of Peace on Vavaʻu Island in Neiafu, Tonga’s second largest city. Unfortunately, the current global situation has also affected this planting and postponed it to next year. Servare et Manere works closely with the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Canberra in the case of the planting of the Tree of Peace in Oceania.