Pope Francis met this November 4 with the Muslim Council of Elders and with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, at the Mosque of the Sakhir Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
“Dear friends, brothers in Abraham, believers in the only God, social and international, economic and personal ills, as well as the dramatic environmental crisis that characterizes current times and on which we have reflected today, come in order to accounts of estrangement from God and neighbor. Therefore, we have a unique and essential task, that of helping to rediscover these forgotten sources of life, of bringing humanity back to drink from this ancient wisdom, of bringing the faithful closer to the adoration of the God of heaven and also bring them closer to men, for whom He made the earth”, said the Holy Father.
Here is the speech delivered by Pope Francis:
Dear Doctor Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, dear members of the Muslim Council of Elders, dear friends, As-salamu alaykum.
I greet you cordially, wishing that the peace of the Most High descend upon each one of you; about you, who seek to promote reconciliation to avoid divisions and conflicts in Muslim communities; on you, who see in extremism a danger that corrodes true religion; about you, who are committed to dispelling erroneous interpretations that through violence distort, instrumentalize and damage a religious creed. May peace descend and remain with you, who wish to spread it by instilling in hearts the values of respect, tolerance and moderation; about you, who intend to foster friendly relations, mutual respect and reciprocal trust with all those who, like me, adhere to a different religious faith; about you, brothers and sisters, who want to foster in young people a moral and intellectual education that is opposed to any form of hatred and intolerance. As-salamu alaykum.
God is the source of peace. May he grant us to be, in any place, channels of his peace. Before you I would like to reiterate that the God of peace never leads to war, never incites hatred, never endorses violence. And we, who believe in Him, are called to promote peace through instruments of peace, such as meetings, patient negotiations and dialogue, which is the oxygen of common coexistence.
Among the objectives that are proposed is to spread a culture of peace based on justice. I would like to tell you that this is the way, indeed, the only way, inasmuch as peace “is the work of justice” (Gaudium et spes, 78). It springs, then, from fraternity, it grows through the fight against injustice and inequalities, it is built by reaching out to others» (Speech on the occasion of the reading of the Final Declaration and closing of the VII Congress of Leaders of Religions World and Traditional, September 15, 2022).
Peace cannot only be proclaimed, it must be consolidated. And this is possible by removing inequalities and discrimination, which produce instability and hostility.
I thank you for your commitment in this regard, as well as for the welcome you have given me and the words you have spoken. I come among you as a believer in God, as a brother and pilgrim of peace. I come among you to walk together, in the spirit of Francis of Assisi, who used to say: “May the peace that you announce in words, have it, and to a greater extent, in your hearts” (Legend of the three companions, XIV, 58 Franciscan Directory, Franciscan Biographical Sources). He has caught my attention to see how in these lands it is customary, when welcoming a guest, not only to shake his hand, but also to put his hand to his heart as a sign of affection. As if to say: your person does not remain distant from me, but enters my heart, my life. I also raise my hand to my heart with respectful affection, looking at each one of you and blessing the Most High for the possibility of meeting.
I think that we have more and more need to meet, to get to know each other and to care about others, to put reality before ideas and people before opinions, openness to heaven before distances from the earth, a future of fraternity rather than a past of hostility, overcoming the prejudices and misunderstandings of history in the name of the One who is the Source of Peace. For the rest, how will the faithful of different religions and cultures be able to live together, welcome each other and esteem each other if we continue to be strangers to each other?
Let us be guided by the saying of Imam Ali: “There are two types of people: your brothers in faith or your fellow human beings”, and let us feel called to take care of all those that the divine plan has placed by our side in this world. Let us exhort ourselves “that, forgetting the past, we sincerely exercise mutual understanding, seeking and promoting together social justice, moral goods, peace and freedom for all men” (cf. Nostra aetate, 3). These are tasks that fall to us, the religious guides. Faced with an increasingly wounded and torn humanity that, under the guise of globalization, breathes with difficulty and fear, the great religions are called to be the heart that unites the members of the body, the soul that gives hope and life to the most high aspirations.
In these days I have spoken about the force of life, which survives in the most arid deserts drinking from the water of encounter and peaceful coexistence. Yesterday I did it taking the example of the amazing “tree of life” found here in Bahrain. The biblical passage we have heard places the tree of life at the center of the garden of origins, at the heart of God’s marvelous plan for man, a harmonic plan capable of embracing all of creation. However, the human being has distanced himself from the Creator and from the order established by Him. From this originated problems and imbalances, which in the biblical narrative go one after the other: fights and murders between brothers (cf. Gn 4), disorders and environmental devastation (cf. Gn 6-9), arrogance and contrasts in human society (cf. Gen 11).
In short, a deluge of evil and death that springs from the heart of man, from the evil spark unleashed by the evil that lurks at the door of his heart (cf. Gn 4,7), to set fire to the harmonic garden of the world. . But this evil has its roots in the rejection of God and the brother, in losing sight of the Author of life and in not recognizing ourselves as custodians of the brothers. That is why the two questions that we have heard are always valid and, regardless of the creed that is professed, they challenge each life and each time: “Where are you?” (Gn 3,9), “Where is your brother?” (Gn 4,9).
Dear friends, brothers in Abraham, believers in the one God, social and international, economic and personal ills, as well as the dramatic environmental crisis that characterizes the current times and on which we have reflected today, ultimately come from distance from God and neighbor. Therefore, we have a unique and essential task, that of helping to rediscover these forgotten sources of life, of bringing humanity back to drink from this ancient wisdom, of bringing the faithful closer to the adoration of the God of heaven and also bring them closer to men, for whom He made the earth.
How? Our means are basically two: prayer and fraternity. These are our weapons, humble and effective. We must not allow ourselves to be tempted by other instruments, by shortcuts unworthy of the Most High, whose name of Peace is insulted by those who believe in the reasons of force and feed violence, war and the arms market, which are “the trade of death” which, with ever-increasing sums of money, is transforming our common home into a huge arsenal. How many dark plots and how many painful contradictions are behind all this.
Let us think, for example, of how many people are forced to migrate from their own land because of conflicts financed by the purchase of outdated weapons at affordable prices, only to be identified and rejected at other borders by means of ever more sophisticated military equipment. . And in this way hope is doubly killed. Well, in the face of these tragic scenarios, while the world follows the chimeras of strength, power and money, we are called to remember, with the wisdom of the elderly and parents, that God and others come first. and more importantly, that only transcendence and fraternity save us.
It is up to us to reopen those sources of life, otherwise the desert of humanity will always be more arid and deadly. Above all, it is up to us to testify, more with deeds than with words, that we believe in it. We have a great responsibility before God and men, and we must be credible models of what we preach, not only in our communities and at home —it is no longer enough— but in the unified and globalized world. We, who descend from Abraham, father of the peoples in faith, cannot concern ourselves only with “our own”, but, more and more united, we must address the entire human community that populates the earth.
Because, in reality, everyone asks, at least in the secret of their hearts, the same great questions: who is man? Why pain, evil, death, injustice? What is there after this life? However, for many, anesthetized by practical materialism and paralyzing consumerism, these same questions lie dormant, while for others they are silenced by the inhuman plagues of hunger and poverty. That among the reasons that forget what is important, our negligence is not included, the scandal of taking care of other things and not announcing the God who gives peace to life and the peace that gives life to men.
Brothers and sisters, let’s support each other in this, let’s follow up on our meeting today, let’s walk together. We will be blessed by the Most High and by the smallest and weakest creatures that He prefers: by the poor, children and young people, who after so many dark nights, await the emergence of a dawn of light and peace.
(Translated from ACI Prensa)