Non secular leaders meet at Istiqlal Mosque and signal declaration calling for ‘non secular concord for the sake of humanity’.
Pope Francis and Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, have signed a joint declaration calling for interfaith friendship, taking a stand towards non secular violence and urging unified motion to guard the planet.
The 87-year-old pontiff met Nasaruddin on the mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, on Thursday, on the third day of his visit to Indonesia, the preliminary leg of a two-week tour of Asia Pacific, which may even take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
Nasaruddin, 65, mentioned that the declaration targeted on two messages: “The primary one … humanity is just one, there aren’t any colors. The second, easy methods to save the environment.”
Opening his speech on the mosque, Francis emphasised the commonality of religions, stating that “by trying deeply … we uncover that we’re all brothers, all pilgrims, all on our option to God, past what differentiates us”.
He warned towards the weaponisation of faith to stoke conflicts and likewise raised the environmental disaster as an existential risk to human civilisation.
“We tackle the accountability to handle the intense … crises that threaten the way forward for humanity equivalent to wars and conflicts,” he mentioned, including that the environmental disaster was “an impediment to the expansion and co-existence of peoples”.
The pope was welcomed to the mosque by a percussion band typically utilized in Islamic ceremonies and as soon as seated, he and Nasaruddin listened to a passage from the Quran recited by a younger blind lady and a passage from the Bible.
Istiqlal Mosque sits throughout from Jakarta’s cathedral, linked by a “tunnel of friendship” as an emblem of non secular fraternity. Francis visited the tunnel earlier than the assembly, delivering blessings and signed a bit of the tunnel.
The tunnel is held up in Indonesia as potent image of non secular freedom, which is enshrined within the nation’s structure, however has been challenged by repeated cases of discrimination and violence towards non secular minorities.
From January 2021 to July 2024, there have been at the very least 123 circumstances of intolerance, together with rejection, closure or destruction of locations of worship and bodily attacks, Amnesty Worldwide famous on the eve of Francis’s go to.
In a while Thursday, Francis will ship mass to almost 80,000 folks in Indonesia’s important soccer stadium, with tens of hundreds extra anticipated outdoors.
Many individuals have travelled from throughout Indonesia’s huge island archipelago for the occasion. Catholicism is considered one of six formally recognised religions or denominations in Indonesia, together with Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.
They symbolize fewer than 3 p.c of the inhabitants of the nation – about eight million folks – in contrast with the 87 p.c – or 242 million – who’re Muslim.