Luca Attanasio writes that too often people point out the past times when religions have failed to unite and even scandalised us all by their disunity and disharmony. However, since 1986 Pope John Paul II began his Prayer for Peace initiative at Assissi much has happened.
“Some days before the second anniversary of the Twin Towers attack in New York and after the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq, I realise that, like never before, dialogue is life, it is like oxygen in a world that is suffocating. The religious worlds are passing through a very delicate phase and dialogue is never an easy task, nor among Christians especially if we think of the difficult moments between Russian Orthodox and Catholics. According to many in the western world the enemy is Islam while on the other hand a section of the Islamic world sees the West as the main opponent; furthermore the Palestinian question seems to have given rise to an ultimate impasse… yet dialogue is the only answer, without dialogue the world is condemned”.
With these words, spoken during the press conference the day before the start of the 17th International Meeting of “People and Religions”, Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of St. Egidio, wanted to express his and his community’s conviction about our time and the strength and importance of inter-religious meetings.
The meeting, named after the first one held by the Pope in Assisi in 1986, “Prayer for Peace”, was this year (2003) held in Aachen, a wonderful German city at the border between Germany, Holland and Belgium, with the intention to express in a physical way that the heart of Europe fits with that of the world, that instead of closing up in a rich and golden fortress, the old continent wants to open to the cultures and religions of the world.
It was the 16th “Prayer for Peace”, if we exclude the one that the Pope himself called, organised by the Community of St. Egidio which has engaged in a kind of nomadic tour around Europe, to bring forth the” legacy of Assisi”.
In this 16 years trip, the Community, which is based in Rome, saw some interesting signs of progress in cities like Warsaw – on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the World War II, Brussels, Milan, Bucharest – on that occasion the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Teoctist, formally invited the Pope to Bucharest, the first visit of John Paul II to an Orthodox country and Church.
The prayer for peace began as a gathering of religious men and women that came together to pray and discuss in a pacifist as well as committed way about war and peace and over the years has evolved into a very high-level meeting of three days where not only is it possible to listen to the viewpoints of many heads of Churches and Faiths, but also to meet up and debate with outstanding figures of the worlds of culture, politics, and art such as: Michail Gorbachev, Giuliano Amato, Boutros Boutros Ghali (former Secretary General of U.N ), Mario Soares, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Romano Prodi, Arrigo Levi, Krystof Zanussi, Jacques Siouf (Director-General FAO), Cardinal Martini, Regis Debray, Joaquim Chissano, Ireland’s Brid Rodgers and Poland’s Lech Walesa.
The 2003 meeting will certainly be remembered for three aspects:
First, after years of icy relations between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox, for the very first time a high representative of the Moscow Patriarchate took part in the meeting. His Eminence Kirill, Metropolitan of Moscow, the Patriarchate’s number two, joined the gathering and, after Cardinal Etchegaray read the message sent by the Pope, took the floor at the inaugurational ceremony.
His words were as open as they were effective…. “Unfortunately, today there are few voices speaking for the necessity of a serious and unprejudiced dialogue between liberal secular humanism and religious cultural traditions. Only inter-religious relations are discussed at the corresponding conferences, while the liberal and humanistic component is almost never present as one of the parts… Today, the world needs real inter-religious dialogue, especially between Christians and Muslims, and dialogue between religious and secular humanistic thought. The aim of such dialogues should be the creation of a multi-polar world”. His Eminence Kirill wanted to reassure everybody beyond any possible misunderstanding, that the Orthodox Church is doing all her efforts in order to promote dialogue and to overcome the burning wound of separation with the “chair of Peter”. In this regard he reminded everybody about the very happy experience of the embrace that two of the main outstanding figures of the 20th centuries – Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI exchanged in Jerusalem in 1964; “our hearts are still beating the same way,” he said.
The second reason last year’s meeting stood out was the great participation of people. It was not at all a gathering for experts, nor for people who already have a sense for peace and dialogue – a kind of “preaching to the converted”- it was a event for all people.
There was a great interest among the people of Aachen and many came from all over Germany. The curiosity around this special event and the people representing different religions and cultures, was huge.
The panels for the duration of the three days were very well attended and the main square of the city, where the final ceremony was held, was overcrowded.
Many faithful attended the prayer services which preceded the final ceremony. There were places of worship for all the religions represented – Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians, new Japanese religions – and all gathered to pray according to their own tradition, between 5.00 and 6.00 p.m. As Catholic Bishop Heinrich Mussinghof of Aachen underlined in his speech: “I am very proud of you, the hospitable people of Aachen in the city and diocese, the helping neighbours and the many participants. All of you are moving and moved people who set peace in motion: “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it” (Ps 34:15). I wish all of us this longing for peace, this passion for freedom and justice, this compassion with the poor and disadvantaged”.
And the final reason was the out standing and numerous presence of the Jews.
Apart from Israel Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Israel, or David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and now working in the American Jewish Committee in Israel, or Rene Samuel Sirat, Conference of European Rabbis who are regular attendees of the “Prayers for Peace” – this year the presence of the Jews increased and the fact that it happened in Germany, made it even more poignant. The Chief Rabbis of Rome, Milan, the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Community, and Oden Ben-Hur, the Ambassador of Israel to the Holy See, among others -including a good number of faithful – made of this meeting a great success in terms of Christian-Jewish Dialogue.
Giuseppe Laras, Chief Rabbi of Milan, seized the opportunity in his speech in the panel discussion “Europe facing its future; identity and values” to go back and stress a part of Andrea Riccardi’s speech regarding the sense of emptiness that many were living with, and bemoaned the fact that when reading the brand new European Constitution he did not find any reference to the Shoah, the Holocaust, which was so fundamental in the post-war reshaping of the continent.
Words, meetings, questions, problems, hopes, all unfolded within these very full and busy days, with 30 panels, two plenary sessions, more than 150 speakers, over 1,000 volunteers of the Community of St.Egidio and the Dioceses of Aachen.
In the last day, all the representatives gathered on a platform after a long procession that wound along the streets of Aachen and after some speeches, they all stood up, lit up a candle in two big candle-holders, signed an appeal for peace which was then delivered to the many ambassadors present in the square and exchange an embrace of peace.
Particularly meaningful were the signs of peace exchanged between the two Imams coming from Iran – one of the Shiite, one of the Sunnite tradition – between themselves and with the Chaldean Catholic Bishop of Baghdad, or those between the Rabbis and some representatives of the Islamic world.
The impact was great and many were moved. Many expressed the need of keeping this process alive and not long afterwards an invitation arrived from an important Italian Archbishop for September 2004 to the prayer for peace Milan 2004.
This article first appeared in The Word (February 2004), a Divine Word Missionary Publication.
