Marking the 10th anniversary of the pontificate of Pope Francis, the Embassy of Argentina to the United States hosted a May 17 interfaith dialogue of religious leaders, including Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who echoed the pope’s emphasis on encountering, listening to, talking with and learning from others to build bridges of solidarity, understanding and peace.
One of the panelists, Mythili “Lee” Bachu, a Hindu woman originally from India who serves as chair of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, noted, “What Pope Francis is trying to tell us is please come together, work together, be together.”
Later she added, “When people come together, we can do a lot of great things.”
In his remarks, Cardinal Gregory emphasized, “Pope Francis’s vision, and his call for fraternal encounter, is really the only way that we will be able to go forward.”
Washington’s archbishop pointed out how people often come together in response to natural or man-made disasters.
“But encounter is more than simply responding to disaster,” the cardinal said. “Encounter is the energy to keep human disasters from developing – the human disaster of hatred and bigotry. We talk about the spread unfortunately of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism. The things that are tearing us apart, they are as destructive as tsunamis, as earthquakes, as hurricanes, except we sometimes don’t find the energy to come together and address them.”
Cardinal Gregory then said, “Encounter is the antidote for fear and hatred.”
Another panelist, Imam Dr. Talib Shareef, the president and imam of Masjid Muhammad, the Nation’s Mosque in Washington, said those who attack other races or religions don’t have relationships with those they are attacking.
“Encounter is about establishing relationships… The word encounter is necessary and very important. That should drive us,” Imam Shareef said. “The natural order of life is calling us to come together and care about one another.”
Panelist Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a close friend of Pope Francis in their native Argentina who with the pope co-authored the book “On Heaven and Earth,” also underscored the importance of encounter.
“The way to do that is through dialogue,” he said, adding that Pope Francis would say that involves “opening my heart to let the other come inside me, and vice versa.”
Rabbi Skorka, who recorded 31 television dialogues with then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio before that Argentine archbishop became pontiff in 2013, noted that his friend used to often say, “I have to put myself in the shoes of the other.”
The rabbi, who is now a senior research fellow for Jewish Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations at Georgetown University in Washington, said, “Dialogue is the key to knowing the other.”
He noted how he had joined the pope’s 2014 visit to the Holy Land, when the pope’s aim was to build bridges between the people of Israel and Palestine. Rabbi Skorka expressed hope that such encounters will someday “illuminate a path to peace” there.
Also speaking on the panel was Allyson Chard, the director of communications for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Washington, D.C., area, who said that in studying Pope Francis’s writing, she was moved by what the pope called “the art of the encounter.”
Chard noted how the pope has emphasized engaging young people, many of whom have no religious affiliation. She added, “We need goodness, we need kindness, we need faith, all those things Pope Francis is talking about.”
Jorge Argüello, the ambassador of the Argentine Republic to the United States, hosted the gathering, which was attended by representatives of embassies and different religious groups.
Welcoming the participants, Ambassador Argüello said Pope Francis’s 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” had inspired a recent book in Argentina, “Fraternal Dialogue,” with a foreword written by the pope in which he emphasized how fraternal discussions can be translated into action and help build a world where the dignity of all people is recognized and where all can find enough food, housing and work.
“Argentina is a success story,” the ambassador said. “We have a history of intercultural and interreligious integration, and religious leaders have been fundamental to achieving that.”
Before the panelists spoke, opening remarks were offered by Rashad Hussain, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United States.
Hussain, noting that the U.S. State Department on May 15 issued its latest International Religious Freedom Report, warned of rising trends of religious extremism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. The world also faces critical challenges like climate change and vaccine hesitancy, he said.
Confronting those issues, he said, “is not a job that governments can do alone.” Noting the influence that religious communities have, Hussain said, “We have a special obligation to be working together.”
In his remarks, Archbishop Pierre praised the interfaith gathering, saying, “We are having an experience of the human fraternity that the Holy Father wants to encourage and inspire.”
The apostolic nuncio pointed out that Pope Francis’s encyclical on fraternal love, “Fratelli Tutti,” was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, who in the midst of the Crusades and interreligious violence crossed the battle lines in Egypt to visit the Sultan Malik-el-Kamil. The pope wrote that St. Francis’s dialogue with the Muslim leader was done “simply to spread the love of God.”
Archbishop Pierre said that what St. Francis did 800 years ago is “what Pope Francis is calling us to do today, in the midst of terrible polarization. Instead of playing the game that so many are playing in our society – insisting on one’s own way at all costs, and seeking the power which will allow one side to impose its own agenda at the expense of the interests of the other – we must choose a different way: a way of true dialogue, in which each party is honest about its own beliefs and ideals, but in which all parties aim for a common good of which everyone can have a part. As religious leaders, we should practice and model this way.”
As the panel opened its discussion, Cardinal Gregory noted that as the archbishop of Washington, his first responsibility is to be the pastor of his flock. He noted the challenge that religious leaders had during the COVID-19 pandemic, when safety restrictions isolated the members of their faith communities.
“I’m very glad we’re all together now,” he said, adding that the interfaith gathering reflected a key priority of Pope Francis, “the importance of dialogue and friendship, what the Holy Father likes to say is encounter.”
Rabbi Skorka said that Pope Francis in “Fratelli Tutti” expressed his dream for humanity. “In meetings we had together before he became pope, he asked, ‘What can we do to produce a deep change in humanity… a condition in which all of us are brothers?’”
In his remarks, Imam Shareef praised Pope Francis’s “Document on Human Fraternity” that the pontiff issued in 2019 with Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque and university, during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.
“The fact that he went to a Muslim country and Muslim land, and it was signed there, that says a lot,” said Imam Shareef.
That document, he said, emphasized the importance of people living together “in a spirit of universal kinship, and building bridges of faith over fear, bridges of peace over violence, bridges of love over hate, and bridges of unity over division.”
After the dialogue, Imam Shareef said that because of that document, Muslims and Christians are coming together more around the world. “We’re seeing things happening because two religious leaders came together. That generates a spirit of hope, and it’s being magnified,” he said.
Asked to offer closing comments at the dialogue, Cardinal Gregory said he hoped the participants would leave with a feeling, “There is hope, there is hope.”
Ambassador Argüello expressed gratitude to the panelists, saying, “Today we have been inspired by Pope Francis’s vision and by each of your own, to work (for the vision) of ‘Fratelli Tutti,’ that all are brothers and sisters.”
