The Vatican oversees Shiite-Catholic meeting to confront global challenges
In a world filled with conflicts and disputes, dialogue and cooperation for peacebuilding have become an urgent necessity among all groups, sects and religions. Globalization has triggered conflicts between the various identities despite them being far apart and not historically in contact. In this context, a number of leading Shiite and Catholic religious figures met in Rome to open up to one another in order to find common ground that will help them address the global crisis and the problems besetting them both.
The meeting was a joint collaboration between Al-Khoei Institute in Najaf and the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome. A number of senior Vatican cardinals and heads of Vatican institutions met with a high-level delegation of Shiite religious leaders from Najaf, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I attended the meetings at the invitation of the two institutions to offer his views on the religious conflict in the region and on how religious leaders can jointly counter that conflict.
The Community of Sant’Egidio is an institution with a lot of experience in conflict resolution and in promoting peace worldwide. It has 70,000 active volunteers of various religions in more than 70 countries. It has also contributed to peace negotiations in Algeria, Mozambique, Indonesia, and elsewhere. By opening up to Iraq, the Community wishes to help solve the country’s religious conflicts and improve the humanitarian situation.
Al-Khoei Institute also has a long experience in participating in constructive dialogues between the followers of different religions. The Institute is the only one of its kind in Najaf, Iraq, with wide and constructive relations aimed at bringing different viewpoints between religions closer, confront negative stereotypes, and disseminate the values of peaceful coexistence among the various religious components of a people.
The meeting was preceded by a number of preliminary activities by the Shiite delegation in Rome and the Vatican. On March 23, the [Shiite] delegation visited the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and was received by the Council’s secretary Monsignor Khaled Akasheh. During the meeting, the Shiite delegation stressed its rejection of all persecution and elimination targeting religious minorities in the Middle East, and especially Iraq. The participants praised the intensive efforts of the Najaf Hawza [Shiite seminary of Najaf is a most important religious center for Shiite worldwide which is located in Najaf, Iraq] in protecting religious and cultural diversity in Iraq and in confronting attempts to suppress the minorities or expel them from the country. The delegation also said that it was fully prepared to cooperate in all fields with Vatican institutions in order to protect diversity and the minorities in Iraq.
On March 23, the Shiite delegation held a religious symposium at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. The symposium was attended by a number of Italian academics and researchers in addition to the ambassadors of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Turkey and Morocco to the Vatican. The symposium’s theme was to showcase the always-tolerant and humane vision of the Najaf Hawza in Iraq, whereby the Hawza never sought to impose a religious state, did not contribute to the persecution of sects and other religions, and did not undertake proselytizing missions to coerce others into becoming Muslims or Shiites. In fact, Najaf’s supreme authority has repeatedly stressed that it calls for a civil state in Iraq and has strongly opposed attempts to impose Sharia on Iraqi society. Mentioned in that regard was Sayyed Sistani’s stance in which he insisted that the Hawza does not call for changing people’s religions and sects and that all it wants for Iraq is peaceful coexistence in accordance with the principle equal citizenship for all the country’s societal components.
During the Catholic-Shiite meeting sessions, the participants discussed the many common areas of Catholicism and Shiism, in that both have religious institutions, hierarchical priestly systems, religious organization, and extensive relations with their popular bases. There are also many common areas in spirituality and the spiritual relationship with the holy figures in each of the two religions. This is in addition to the presence of similar rituals and rites, including pilgrimages to holy shrines and the tragedy associated with the death of Hussein for the Shiites and the crucifixion of Christ for the Catholics. The participants emphasized the need to jointly confront major global challenges such as religious extremism, the disintegration of the family, increased hatred, and world conflicts. These problems are a concern for Shiite and Catholic religious leaders alike.
The sessions were officially opened on March, 24 by Luca Giansanti, the director-general for Political Affairs and Security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome and Italy’s former ambassador to Tehran. He said, “We are witnessing the rebirth of the Shiites in the region, and we are very interested in knowing it and in dealing and cooperating with it to build the future.” He praised Sayyed Sistani’s positive role in developing Shiite political thought, something whose significance the West still does not fully understand. He added, “We look forward to expanding cooperation between the Shiite and Catholic religious institutions in addressing the problems of sectarianism and extremism in the world.”
Afterward, Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, gave a speech comparing the communist challenge in the past and extremist religious today, in that both are using violence and coercion against the followers of religions to force them to abandon their religion and join atheism or an extreme dogmatic version of religiosity. He stressed the importance of the participation of religions in peacemaking, not only to prevent wars but also to expand the enforcement of justice and peace in the various spheres of life in a continuous complementary process.
The attendees observed a minute of silence in solidarity with the secretary-general of the Al-Wefaq political society in Bahrain, Sheikh Ali Salman. Salman was arrested by Bahraini authorities due to his global activities in defending human rights in Bahrain.
At the conclusion of the dialogue, the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, Andrea Riccardi, noted that “in a globalized world, we cannot live in the past, when you had to either fight or ignore the others. … We need to understand the others in order to live together in peace.”
In an interview, Dr. Andrea Trentini, one of the officials of the Sant’Egidio conference, told me: “The commonalities between Shiites and Catholics on the subject of religious values, the tragedy of martyrdom, the values of sacrifice, and the moral and spiritual feelings, which all are similar, can help them make a common and effective contribution in addressing violence and conflicts in the world, and in spreading peace and love.
The conferees ended their meetings after emphasizing that the latter would continue and expand as part of future dialogues and practical activities. The two parties are planning to expand the meetings and take practical steps in education, publication and other spheres. The Shiite delegation met Pope Francise in the end of meeting on 25th of March. They gave him some Shiite books that are famous in promoting religious tolerance and they invented him to visit Iraq as Iraqis from all components welcome him to support them in fighting against extremism.
The broad spiritual, social and financial capacity of Catholic and Shiite institutes gave them a huge potential and opportunity to influence in their societies in terms of promoting peace, reducing conflicts and offering solutions that are not available for politicians. Finally, it seems that broadening and deepening such cooperation between religious leaders now requires the inclusion of the various religions and sects and the need to go beyond dialogue: to take practical steps to confront religious violence and conflicts.
