The Pauline book center of Perugia invited the Diocesan Ecumenical Center and other Catholic associations in the city to participate in a day of reflection and debate concerning the Interreligious Encounter for Prayer for Peace held in Assisi on 27 October. On that occasion, Pope Benedict XVI reminded everyone that it was the 25th anniversary of this by now annual gathering, first convoked by Blessed John Paul II in 1986.
During the meeting at Perugia, our sisters presented the new book, Lo spirito di Assisi (The Spirit of Assisi), edited by the St. Egidio Community and published by the SSP.
The theme of the Assisi encounter, Pilgrims of Truth, Pilgrims of Peace, reminds all people of good will of the urgent need to be peacemakers in today’s world not just on the theoretical level but above all through concrete deeds. The encounter offered everyone a picture of hope: the leaders of the world’s major religions standing alongside one another, defenseless from the human standpoint, powerful only in prayer and in their search for the Absolute. The day of prayer at Assisi made it clear that all human beings have a single and interdependent destiny and that the religions of the world have to unite so as to meet the urgent need to “globalize” justice in the face of newly emerging injustices, stemming in part from the current economic crisis. A new civilization must be founded–one characterized by human living together based on the art of dialogue: dialogue understood as pilgrimage and risk, as recognition and genuine acceptance of the many different cultural and religious identities of the human family.