Pope Prays Assisi Meeting Will Foster Peace
Pope Benedict XVI leads a prayer service in Paul VI hall at the Vatican 26 Oct. The service was held in advance of the pope’s interfaith meeting the next day in Assisi. (photo: CNS/Paul Haring)
27 Oct 2011 – by Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI
prayed that his interreligious pilgrimage to Assisi would
promote dialogue among believers of different faiths and
help the world move toward peace and reconciliation.
“In a world still torn by hatred, divisions,
selfishness and wars, we want to pray that tomorrow’s
meeting in Assisi would promote dialogue among people
of different religions,” the pope said Oct. 26 during a
prayer service at the Vatican.
Pope Benedict prayed that the Assisi meeting
would help “enlighten the minds and hearts of all men and
women so that anger would give way to pardon, division
to reconciliation, hatred to love, violence to meekness, so
that peace would reign in the world.”
“We ask God for the gift of peace. We want to
pray that he make us instruments of his peace,” the pope
said at the Christian prayer service, which was attended by
cardinals and bishops, as well as Orthodox and Protestant
leaders. Several Muslim representatives also were present.
The prayer service took the place of the pope’s
weekly general audience. About 25,000 people were
expected for the service planned for St. Peter’s Square, but a rainstorm forced the Vatican to pack the Vatican audience hall to overflowing and to accommodate others in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Benedict stopped briefly to give his blessing.
In his homily during the prayer service, Pope
Benedict said Christ came to bring peace to the world and
his followers have a serious obligation to proclaim his
love, salvation and peace to all peoples.
The instrument Christ used to inaugurate his
kingdom of peace was the cross, the pope said. Love, and
not weapons, is the key.
Those who want to be true disciples of Christ, he
said, also must be ready “to lose their lives for him, so that goodness, love and peace will triumph in the world.”
The Gospel says Jesus sent his disciples out as
“lambs among the wolves,” the pope said. “Christians must never give in to the temptation to become ‘wolves among the wolves’; the kingdom of Christ’s peace is not spread with power, strength or violence, but with self–giving, with love taken to the extreme, even toward one’s enemies.”
Christians must begin by making their own communities “islands of peace” where differences of race,
language and economic standing have no importance, he said.
The readings for the prayer service were in
English and Italian; the prayer petitions were read in
German, Polish, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabic,
Spanish and Chinese.
The prayers asked God for the gifts “of wisdom
and intelligence that make us disciples of truth,” for the
strength needed “to discover the paths of true peace,” and
for forgiveness for “our pride, for the selfishness and the
violence that often accompanies our choices and
lifestyles.”
The prayer in Arabic asked God to help Christians
treasure the word and example of Jesus and “stay far from war and violence in all its forms.”
Tags: Pope Benedict XVI Vatican Interreligious Interfaith Assisi