Vatican City, 29 October 2015 (VIS) –
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for
Interreligious Dialogue, has sent a message to the participants in
the Religions for Peace European Assembly, currently gathered in
Castel Gandolfo to discuss the theme “Welcoming Each Other in
Europe: from Fear to Trust”.
The cardinal mentioned the Assembly's
concept paper, which underlines the multiple challenges of today's
Europe: fear of losing one's identity leading to radicalism and
fundamentalism, tendency to withdraw into oneself, xenophobia, rising
intolerance towards different religions and minorities and increasing
tides of forced migration due to wars, dictatorial regimes and
ecological crisis.
“How can we change fear into trust,
discrimination into respect, enmity into amity, polarisation into
solidarity, a selfish lifestyle into a selfless one, a throwaway
culture into a caring culture, and confrontation into encounter and
dialogue? The true mission of religion is peace because religion and
peace go together. No true religious leader can ignore the culture of
dehumanisation and violence or preach and support it. We all agree
that peace or violence and trust or fear come from the human heart.
Prayer, spiritual practices, and actions for justice and peace can
awaken our hearts to overcome the polarised vision of seeing our
neighbour as another separate person. As religious leaders our urgent
challenge today, is to transform distrust , suspicion, intolerance
into a new culture based on respect, mutual understanding,
non-violence, solidarity and peaceful conflict resolution. Since our
spiritual patrimony is so great, let us work together to remedy these
social and cultural ills through dialogue and cooperation”.
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