Interfaith Global Forum begins in Vienna

(Vatican Radio) The first Global Forum of the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue is officially underway in Vienna, Austria. An opening ceremony on Monday morning featured remarks of greeting from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who placed the work of the two-day event in the key of respect for fundamental human dignity. “What is at the centre of our concern,” he said, “is the human person, man and woman.” Cardinal Tauran went on to explain that the human person is the object of the attention of political and religious leaders. “Each one of us is a citizen and a believer,” he said. “All of us belong to the same human family, which means that, “we share the same dignity, we are confronted by the same problems, we enjoy the same rights and we are called to accomplish the same duties.”

The inauguration of the KAICIID dialogue centre one year ago in Vienna was an occasion for expressions of high hopes for a new era of frankness and openness in dialogue aimed at fostering respect and furthering mutual understanding. This year, KAICIID’s first Global Forum, those hopes remain undiminished. Nevertheless, the focus of the Forum’s work is decidedly practical: the over four hundred religious leaders, academic experts and policy makers are asking themselves: “How do we educate – how best ought we to teach respect for the Other?” – what Cardinal Tauran called, “the intelligence of the heart,” the promotion of which he specifically identified as one of the tasks of the KAICIID project as such:

One of the tasks of KAICIID could be the promotion of what I dare to call, "the intelligence of the heart", which inspires us to respect what God is accomplishing in every human being and at the same time to respect the mystery that every human person represents. What we have to avoid absolutely is that religions engender fear, attitudes of exclusion of or superiority in people.

The opening ceremony gave way to an exemplary panel discussion that took the form of a practical interreligious dialogue on the Image of the Other, bringing together leading academic experts who were also practicing believers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, respectively. Following the panel discussion, participants went for the balance of the day into small, closed-door working group sessions, which focused on topics ranging from interreligious understanding and seminary training, to best practices in education, to the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding.

Listen to the report by Chris Altieri: