From St. Francis’ time to Pope John Paul II in 1986 to today, the city of Assisi has been a symbol of dialogue and peace. Rabbi David Rosen stresses that interreligious dialogue is essential to peace, because if we respect other religions, “we can overcome stereotypes, prejudices, stigmatization, and live together in a better society.”
By Kielce Gussie – Assisi
What is the legacy of St. Francis and his Italian hometown of Assisi? What is the legacy of Pope St. John Paul II’s Spirit of Assisi gathering in 1986?
Forty years after that historic meeting for peace convened by the Polish Pope, the call for a culture of peace, dialogue, and prayer lives on. For this to move forward, conversations and good relations between different religions is not only important, they’re essential.
Rabbi David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and Special Adviser to the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, UAE, stressed that building concrete relations amongst religions is necessary to create peace in the world.
Below is the transcript of the interview, which has been edited for clarity.
Q: You have worked for over four decades on establishing good relations between different religions. What has been the biggest lesson you have learned during these 40 years?
If you treat people with respect, then you will receive respect from them. If you treat them with curiosity, you will discover their curiosity, and they will get to know you and you will get to know them, and that knowledge itself improves the world.
Q: Your work also brought you to South Africa and Jerusalem. What has been your experience working in places that have been challenging?
In a sense, that’s where you discover the most wonderful and most engaged and most inspiring individuals from the different communities who work to build bridges.
It’s relatively easy to rest on your laurels when you have nothing challenging, but when there are challenges, that galvanizes the best within people as well as often the worst.
Q: Being in Assisi, as we heard on the panel “Prayer, Dialogue and Peace: The Legacy of Assisi,” what do you think the legacy of Assisi as a city, but St. Francis as well as he worked to establish relations with other faiths?
I don’t know how scientific our narratives are with regards to Francis, but nevertheless, he’s a symbol of outreach beyond the confines of one’s own tradition, one’s own nation, one’s own cultural context. That’s really important. And Nostra Aetate affirmed for the first time, for the Catholic Church formally, that God, that the divine, that religion, that truth [can, ed.] be found outside the confines of the Catholic Church.
That, I think, is very much the spirit of Assisi, to affirm that we have those values in common and that we each represent different ways to the transcendent and a recognition that nobody can have a monopoly on truth or access to God.
Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad and the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Jakarta also spoke about dialogue, peace, and prayer
That’s really important. I hope that kind of recognition induces in us a sense of theological humility, that we behave, therefore, more responsibly and that we work together for the benefit of humanity, for peace in the world.
Q: Towards the end of your speech during the panel, you spoke about curiosity in diversity and how that means we can admire the difference in other cultures, faiths, and backgrounds.
I was quoting Bishop Krister Stendhal, who was the Bishop of Stockholm and before that, the head of the Divinity School in Harvard. In addition to his other guidelines about how to respect others, he had this comment, leave room for holy envy, by which he meant that it’s great if you see commonalities and emphasize commonalities. But you shouldn’t be afraid to see something in another tradition that’s wonderful and something you can celebrate that’s not part of your own particular tradition.
That is part of the glory of diversity, of God’s creation in so many other areas. To be banal, we don’t want a field just made of one kind of flowers. It’s the diversity that adds to the beauty and it testifies to the glory of God.
Q: We see that here at this event. There are so many people from different religions, different faiths and backgrounds. Is this a concrete example of that curiosity in diversity?
Absolutely, and I feel very sad for those who don’t get the opportunity to experience that. I feel very privileged that I’m able, especially in terms of my vocational work, to experience it so much. I get to wonderful places, meet wonderful people, and continuously get inspired and enriched through these encounters.
These meetings of Sant’Egidio have certainly greatly enriched me and continue to enrich me.
Q: Both the meeting 40 years ago with Pope St. John Paul II and now this year’s international meeting for peace brought people of different faiths and backgrounds together. Why do you think that is so important in building peace in the world?
Because if we don’t know one another, if we can’t look one another in the eye, then we misrepresent one another. We fall victim to prejudices, stereotypes, and we use all kinds of arguments then to justify why we shouldn’t be nice to one another. That is what is unfortunately happening in the world.
Yet for it all, and despite the conditions of our world, there is more collaboration, cooperation, and understanding between the different religions of the world than ever before. So, there’s a great deal of reason to be very hopeful.
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