ROME -- The Sant’Egidio religious community based in the capital greets the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos with joy, this Catholic community said Friday.

 Sant’Egidio strongly supports dialogue and negotiation as the only viable paths towards reaching the end of conflict. This is an important sign for a world in which, over the past few months, has been seen a dissemination of “the fractured Third World War” that Pope Francis mentions.

 The prize can be seen as a motivational push to continue the peace process in Colombia between the government and the FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, after the signing of the deals Sept. 26, then the controversial NO vote in the Colombian referendum.

 “The Nobel Prize will encourage Santos to go ahead with a task that we have lived and appreciated, having carried out, and continuing to carry out, as a community, facilitation work in the meeting of the different sides of the civil war in Colombia,” said the Sant’Egidio community.

 “For the good of this big Latin American country, it is not possible to return to a war that lasted 52 years and that caused over 200,000 deaths and five million internal displacements,” the religious community concluded.

 nkd