VATICAN CITY (CNS): For the good of all people, the care of the poor and the future of the Earth, religions must co-operate in reminding modern men and women that God exists and has a plan for their lives and their behaviour, Pope Francis said.
“The Catholic Church knows the importance of promoting friendship and respect among men and women of different religious traditions,” he said, repeating the entire phrase twice for emphasis on March 20 during a meeting with the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and Jain delegations that had come to the Vatican for his inauguration.
The Catholic Church, he said, “is equally aware of the responsibility that all have for this world, for creation – which we must love and protect – and we can do much good for those who are poor, weak and suffering, to favour justice, to promote reconciliation, to build peace”.
“But more than anything,” he said, “we must keep alive in the world the thirst for the Absolute.
“We must never allow a one-dimensional vision of the human person to prevail – a vision that reduces the person to what he produces and consumes.
“This is one of the most dangerous, insidious things of our age,” Pope Francis told his guests from other Christian churches and other religions.
Too much violence, he said, had resulted from “the attempt to eliminate God or the divine” from people’s personal and social lives.
To be open to the transcendent, to seek God, was part of being fully human, and continued to exist in the human heart, he said.
The Pope told the religious leaders that he and they had an obligation to be close to people who did not belong to a faith community, but who were “searching for the truth, goodness and beauty”.
Such people, he said, “are our precious al-lies in the commitment to defending human dignity in building peaceful co-existence among peoples and in safeguarding creation”.
Before meeting the entire group, the Pope held private meetings with Ecumenical Pat-riarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the “first among equals” of Orthodox bishops and a frequent visitor during Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy, and with head of ecumenical relations for the Russian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk.
At the beginning of the audience with all of the religious leaders, Patriarch Bartholomew addressed the Pope, congratulating him on his election and emphasising the importance of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the search for Christian unity as a sign of the credibility of the Gospel message and a way of strengthening the good Christians can do in the world.
“We have an obligation to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, cure the sick and, more in general, to care for those in need,” the patriarch said, acknowledging how much Pope Francis did that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires
He said Pope Francis’ choice of a simple papal style was a sign of his focus “on the essential, which fills with joy the hearts” of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, because it demonstrated the priority of “justice and mercy” in Christian teaching.
The Pope said that with so many Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant communities present at his inauguration March 19, he felt even more strongly the call to work and pray for Christian unity, especially because the Mass offered a bit of a foretaste of how good it is for Christians to pray together.
“For my part, I want to assure you of my firm commitment to continuing the journey of ecumenical dialogue in the footsteps of my predecessors,” he said.
Firmly believing in Christ and giving a “free, joyful and courageous witness” to the faith “will be our best contribution to the cause of unity among Christians, a service of hope for a world still marked by divisions, contrasts and rivalries”, Pope Francis said.
