A conference organized by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum for Thursday and Friday will consider perspectives from Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est.
The event is among activities linked to the Jubilee Year of Mercy, with the goal of examining and deepening the theological and pastoral perspectives of the Encyclical for today’s world, especially in relation to the work of those who are involved in the Church’s service of charity.
The basic idea, Msgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, secretary of Cor Unum explained, is that the message “God is love” is always current and “young”, and holds true for all men of all times. Deus Caritas Est wanted to briefly show that what the Church does for man is a great witness of God’s love for man.
Among the participants will be Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who will present a theological lecture of Deus Caritas Est, and Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, Archbishop of Manila and President of Caritas Internationalis, who will present a report highlighting the implications of the Church’s service of charityfor today.
Afterwards, Rabbi David Shlomo Rose, Director of the Department of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee of Jerusalem; Professor Saeed Ahmed Khan of Wayne State University of Detroit (U.S.); and the philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj, Director of the InstitutPhilanthropos of Freiburg (Switzerland) will intervene to offer a lecture on the meaning of love within the three monotheistic religions.
Over the course of these two days, there will be testimonies from heads of the international Catholic charitable organizations. In particular: Michael Thio, President of the International Confederation of Saint Vincent de Paul, who will speak on the challenges that the Encyclical offers today to the Catholic charitable organizations in the world; Roy Moussalli, Executive Director of Syrian Society for Social Development, who will present some projects of reconciliation among the different local communities, already undertaken in the context of the Syrian crisis. Professor Father Paolo Asolan of the Pontifical Lateran University will speak on how Christian anthropology affects the Church’s service of charity; while Professor Rainer Gehrig of the Catholic University of Murcia (Spain), will confront the theme of the theology of charity and how the reflection on Deus Caritas Est has contributed to the creation of disciplinary sectors in this field of study.
The congress will be streamed from the website of “Cor Unum,” www.corunumjubilaeum.va
