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 against religious violence and urging unified action to protect the planet.
The 87-year-old pontiff met Nasaruddin at the mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, on Thursday, on the third day of his visit to Indonesia, the initial leg of a two-week tour of Asia Pacific, which will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
Nasaruddin, 65, said that the declaration focused on two messages: “The first one … humanity is only one, there are no colours. The second one, how to save our environment.”
Opening his speech at the mosque, Francis emphasised the commonality of religions, stating that “by looking deeply … we discover that we are all brothers, all pilgrims, all on our way to God, beyond what differentiates us”.
He warned against the weaponisation of religion to stoke conflicts and also raised the environmental crisis as an existential threat to human civilisation.
“We take on the responsibility to address the serious … crises that threaten the future of humanity such as wars and conflicts,” he said, adding that the environmental crisis was “an obstacle to the growth and co-existence of peoples”.
The pope was welcomed to the mosque by a percussion band often used in Islamic ceremonies and once seated, he and Nasaruddin listened to a passage from the Quran recited by a young blind girl and a passage from the Bible.
Istiqlal Mosque sits across from Jakarta’s cathedral, linked by a “tunnel of friendship” as a symbol of religious fraternity. Francis visited the tunnel before the meeting, delivering blessings and signed a section of the tunnel.
The tunnel is held up in Indonesia as potent symbol of religious freedom, which is enshrined in the country’s constitution, but has been challenged by repeated instances of discrimination and violence against religious minorities.
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