"Religious freedom, interreligious dialogue and faith aim at something more than consensus meant to detect ways to carry out concrete strategies to strengthen the peace process. The greatest dialogue objective is to discover truth", declared Benedict XVI yesterday afternoon, while talking to the representatives of the different religions which are present in the United States today, during the meeting taking place at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center of Washington. "What are the origin and the destiny of mankind? What are good and evil? What is expecting us at the end of our earthly lives?" According to the Pope, those are the questions which "will never be cancelled from the human heart". And the spiritual leaders, he added, have "a particular duty; we might say they have a special competence, to focus on the deepest questions of human conscience", making room for "reflection and prayer, in a frenetic world". "While we always join our hearts and minds in search of peace he concluded , we also have to pay special attention to the voice of truth. In this way, our dialogue won’t just take care to detect a common value background, but will need more; we shall have to investigate the ultimate foundations. We have no reasons to be afraid, because truth reveals us the essential relationship between the world and God".
