Pope Francis received the participants of the second meeting of the Permanent Committee for Dialogue, established between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Iraqi Superintendancy (for Shi’ites, Sunnis, Christians, Yazidi, Sabaeans/Mandeans) this morning in the small hall of the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
Here is a Zenit translation of the Holy Father’s greeting to the participants.
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The Holy Father’s Greeting
Good morning! I greet you warmly and I thank you for your visit and for your presence. This meeting of dialogue and fraternity is a real pleasure for me. We are all brothers, and where there is brotherhood there is peace. We are all children of God. And we, as His Eminence [Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran] said, have a common Father on earth: Abraham, and we come from that first “going out” of Abraham up to today, all together. We are brothers and, as brothers, all different and all the same, as the fingers of a hand: there are five fingers, all fingers, but all different.
I thank God, the Lord, who has helped us to meet here. The dialogue between you, your visit is a true richness of brotherhood, and therefore a path of all to peace – peace of heart, peace of families, peace of countries, peace of the world.
I ask Almighty God to bless you all, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. Thank you so much.
[Original text: Italian] [Translation by Virginia M. Forrester]
