Before his weekly General Audience this morning, April 5, 2017, Pope Francis met with a Catholic-Muslim delegation from Britain in the auletta of the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
Present were: Maulana Ali Raza RIZVI, President of Majlis and Ulama Europe; Maulana Muhammad Shahid RAZA, Chairman of the British Muslim Forum, Great Britain; Shaykh Ibrahim MOGRA, Co-Chair of Christian Muslim Forum; and Maulana Sayed Ali Abbas RAZAWI, Director General of the Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society.
Here is a translation of the Holy Father’s greeting to the participants.
* * *
I welcome you with joy. I like to think that the most important work that we must do between us, in humanity, is the work “of the ear”: to listen to one another — to listen to one another without hurrying to give an answer. To receive the word of a brother, of a sister, and then to think of giving my own — but the capacity to listen, this is so important. It is interesting when persons have this capacity to listen, speaking in a low, tranquil tone . . . Instead, when they do not have it, they speak loudly and even shout. Among brothers, all of us must speak, listen to one another, and talk slowly, tranquilly, to seek the way together. And when one listens and speaks, one is already on the way.
I thank you for this path you are undertaking and I ask Almighty and Merciful God to bless you. And I ask you to pray for me.
Thank you very much.
[Original text: Italian] [Translation by Virginia M. Forrester]
