” “In the “strength of the prayers of the different religions, in the context of a meeting, preceded by intensive talks on many problems of the world, not mixed, not together, but one beside the other, never one against the other” is the answer to September 11th and to the tragic events that followed over the last five years.
This was stated by Jean-Dominique Durand, historian and lecturer at Lyons University, in a comment made for SirEuropa, prompted by Benedict XVI’s message for the 20th anniversary of John Paul II’s meeting in Assisi.
“Prayer adds Durand is an effective education to peace and, as such, it is the only possible way towards pulling down the barriers of hatred and soothe the thirst for revenge. Neither prayer certainly leads, as John Paul II said in 1986, to search ‘religious consensus’ and is not ‘a concession to relativism in religious beliefs'”. “In the past recalls the historian religions have often been exploited to justify hatreds and conflicts. Now more than ever, religions can be used to fuel geopolitical tensions”. Before all this, he concludes, “we must powerfully claim and cry out that war can never be a holy one, peace is the only holy thing”: the religious leaders as well as every believer have unique responsibility for this towards God and towards men”.
