With his choice, Francis continues in the footsteps of his predecessors. The significance of his gesture in Assisi
The only way to stop the “piecemeal World War III” Pope Francis keeps on talking about, is a piecemeal world peace. A peace that is lived, testified, sought, invoked and believed in men and women, religious leaders and simple believers who do not give into the “paganism of indifference”. Who are not prepared to succumb to the ideologies of fundamentalists that nestle inside each religion, those who preach about a clash of civilisations and find religious justifications for their “dirty” wars, their acts of violence and their terrorist attacks carried out thanks to arms traffickers and the complacency of certain countries, which are often the West’s closest allies.
Others have now added their voice to the Pope’s appeal, with its powerful words against war and against the soap bubbles of indifference. This appeal finds a voice in the Patriarch of Tendai Buddhism with his wrinkles and orange robe or in the moving words of the rabbi who survived the Nazi concentration camps or in the powerful words of the imams and the Muslim Ulemas, whose testimonies in defence of Christians are a testament to how absurd it is to consider Islam as one fundamentalist bloc. It finds a voice in the heartfelt Christian words of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, whose heartbeat seems to be increasingly in tune with the Bishop of Rome’s.
As the sun sets on Assisi’s square, it becomes apparent that the interreligious meeting for peace was not a mere “spectacle”. And despite the fact the world is increasingly shaken by wars, hatred, violence, exploitation and poverty, there are still many men and women , many faithful of all religions who are not giving up. They are small fragments, tiny pieces of a puzzle humanity yearns to complete. The cure for a piecemeal World War III.
