{"id":18344,"date":"2025-04-24T17:21:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/?p=18344"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T16:21:04","slug":"pope-francis-symbol-interreligious-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/18344\/pope-francis-symbol-interreligious-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis symbol of interreligious friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Pope Francis has been\u00a0 a symbol of unity in fostering interreligious friendship and dialogue throughout his papacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

With Pope Francis\u2019 passing, Religious communities around the world recall his efforts that contributed to friendship and dialogue between Christians and people of all religions. Pope Francis encouraged people of all religions to promote diversity, peace, and care of creation.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cInterreligious dialogue helps to promote peace, especially in a time when \u201cbellicose rhetoric has sadly come back into fashion\u201d, the Pope said.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis encouraged people of all religions to promote diversity, peace, and care of creation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Francis, 88, fostered those connections by making more than 45 international trips, including historic visits to the Middle East, where he met with people of other faiths including Jews and Muslims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

During his visit in February 2019 to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis offered an image of the Church seeking to build bridges and deepen relations with other religions.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, the \u2018Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,\u2019 also known as the Abu Dhabi declaration, signed by Pope Francis and the highest authority among Sunni Muslims, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayyeb.<\/p>\n

For among its conclusions, it launched the Declaration as \u201can appeal to every upright conscience that rejects deplorable violence and blind extremism; an appeal to those who cherish the values of tolerance and fraternity that are promoted and encouraged by religions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope Francis become the first Pope to complete a visit to Iraq And met with the highest authority among Iraq\u2019s Shia Muslims, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, Pope Francis would become the first Pope to complete a visit to Iraq, despite challenges of security and the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he also\u00a0met with the highest authority among Iraq\u2019s Shia Muslims, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leader of the world\u2019s Catholics pointed out the importance of his meeting with the Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, stating: \u201cThis meeting carried a global message that violence in the name of religion is a violation of religion itself, and all religions are obligated to cooperate to promote peace and teach it to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalls the Ayatollah\u2019s joint appeal to the great powers \u201cto abandon the language of war, prioritizing reason and wisdom.\u201d The Pope appreciates a phrase from their meeting: \u201cHuman beings are either brothers in religion or equals in creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also renewed his prayers that Christians and Muslims may always be \u201cwitnesses of truth, love and hope, in a world scarred by numerous conflicts and therefore in need of compassion and healing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis would personally participate in numerous interfaith summits and interreligious encounters<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis would personally participate in numerous interfaith summits and interreligious encounters, making time on nearly every Apostolic Visit to meet with leaders of other religions.<\/p>\n

Even after some health battles and some uncertainty about his dream coming to fruition, Pope Francis travelled in September 2024 to the Indonesia, the country that has the largest population of Muslims worldwide, with more than 240 million. That would be the first leg of his whirlwind four-country Apostolic Journey, before continuing to Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore.<\/p>\n

At the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, the world\u2019s largest, the Pope and Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar signed the Joint Declaration of Istiqlal 2024 on Fostering Religious Harmony for the Sake of Humanity, which called for collaboration among religious leaders to react to two \u201cserious crises\u201d they said \u201cthe world is facing,\u201d namely dehumanization and climate change.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis visited synagogues in Rome, New York, and elsewhere, and often expressed his closeness to his Jewish brothers and sisters, frequently issuing categorical condemnations of anti-Semitism. He also recognized in the footsteps of his predecessors the horrors the Jewish people have faced, and condemned the Shoah.<\/p>\n

Francis was remembered\u00a0 for his calls for inclusivity and efforts to foster solidarity among Catholics, other other religious communities and even atheists. \u201cAll religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine,\u201d Francis\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Source: shafaqna<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis has been\u00a0 a symbol of unity in fostering interreligious friendship and dialogue throughout his papacy. With Pope Francis\u2019 passing, Religious communities around the world recall his efforts that contributed to friendship and dialogue between Christians and people of all religions. Pope Francis encouraged people of all religions to promote diversity, peace, and care […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":18345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7456],"tags":[13763,8154,14551,7573,7943],"class_list":["post-18344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-infallibles","tag-ahl-al-bayt-a-s","tag-allah","tag-ethics","tag-imam-ali","tag-jurisprudence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}