Three Hundred Religious Leaders Gather in Assisi To Pray For Peace
Religious Leaders in Assisi
Benedict XVI, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, on Thursday presided over a meeting in Assisi, where 300 representatives of different religions or of no religion at all gathered to commemorate 25 years since Pope John Paul II’s daylong prayer for world peace, in 1986, during the Cold War.
The event is said to have lacked the splendor it had 25 years ago, when Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa joined the papal initiative, but it also had its highlights as Benedict XVI invited Buddhist monks from mainland China and some agnostics and atheists, who, in Pope’s words, though profess no religion, still look for the truth.
There were invited representatives of main Christian confessions and of other religions: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, delegations of the Orthodox Churches from Serbia, Greece, Russia, and Belarus, leaders of the Lutheran, Methodists, and Baptists, several rabbis, 60 Muslims, six Hindus and Shinto, three Taoists, three Jains and Zoroastrians.
Traditional Catholics condemned the initiative, as they had condemned the one in 1986, considering that it was a blasphemy to invite representatives of the “false religions” to pray to God.
The Society of Pius X, which is a traditionalist group, said that they would hold 1,000 masses to make amends for the sin committed by the Pope by inviting the non-Christians to join in prayer with them.
They also urged the Pope to take the opportunity and attempt to convert all the representatives of other denominations and religions to Catholicism.
What is interesting is that Benedict XVI himself disapproved of the practice 25 years ago and refused to attend it, saying that it was not appropriate for the Catholics to mix in prayer with other religious. On Thursday he stripped the event of all its common prayer service, thus wishing to avoid critics of syncretism.
The Pope alluded that with all the commotion and criticism around it, the event 25 years ago paid off, since the world is without major wars and the Communism fell, and so did the Berlin wall that was separating the people in Europe.
He did remark though that there is still violence and local clashes, and that religion is sometimes used to justify them. However, he added that it was wrong to demand that religion disappeared from the daily life and from the public arena, so that it may no longer be used as a motivation for violence.
The absence of God in the daily lives of people shows even more devastating results, as it takes away all moral references and criteria of judgment, and that it leads to terrible mistakes in history.
The opinion was shared by a Muslim scholar, who said that misunderstanding religion is often the real cause behind the onset of violence, referring to the justification of violence by the Muslim faith.
Benedict XVI got off to a bad start in his relation with the Muslims, when in 2006 he accused them of stirring violence by using some Christian medieval texts. On that occasion he quoted from that texts references to the “evil and inhuman” character of the Muslim religion.
Religious Leaders in Assisi
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury explained that the members of religions were not gathered in Assisi to come to a minimal ground on belief, but rather to show the world that even professing their distinctiveness they could struggle against the foolishness of a world obsessed with suspicions, based on idea of security realized by active hostility, and capable of tolerating massive loss of lives.
Wande Abimbola, representative of the Yoruba, said, standing on the altar of St. Mary of the Angels basilica and beating a drum, that only by respecting the rights of the indigenous religions peace can be achieved.
The people who attended the ceremony had lunch with the pope, then they gathered in a call for peace in the afternoon and then returned to Rome.
Some people all over the Christian world have often criticized the participation of popes in non-Christian rituals, which they consider demeaning for the majesty of a Christian bishop.
However, the involvement in the cause of preserving peace has been a preoccupation for must religions. The Catholic pope this year protested by the leaders of Egypt, at that time the president Mubarak, for the persecution of Christians in his country.
He also drew anger from the Pakistani authorities, as he approached the controversial blasphemy law in this country, to which many Christians fall victims.
The pope protested the attitude of the Chinese authorities, which persecute Christians and intervene with the sacerdotal consecration of the Roman Catholic bishops in this country.
There is a somewhat founded concern that the meetings between representatives of other religions would lead to doctrinal issues, which could prove to be quite hard to overcome, considering the differences between different forms of religions.
People fear that the religious institutions may feel compel to follow the political ones that are in a process of merging all over the world. Such a merger would be at the expense of their doctrinal identity, which in this case is very important.
