Walking in his brothers shoes

At the end of the general audience Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI greeted Paul Bhatti, the bishop of Faisalabad, Pakistan, Mgr. Joseph Coutts and Syed Muhammad Abdul Khabir Azad, Grand Imam of the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore.

Paul Bhatti is the elder brother of Shahbaz, the Pakistani minister for religious minorities who was assassinated just over a month ago by extremists on his way to work in the capital Islamabad. In deciding to continue his brother’s mission to defend minority rights and see the nation’s infamous blasphemy law repealed, Paul, a doctor by profession, has accepted President Asif Ali Zardari’s offer to become the current government's representative for religious minorities, despite the obvious risk this post entails.

Tuesday, during a meeting organized by the Sant'Egidio Community, he said he had forgiven the killers of his brother, whom he remembers as a warm and patient man. His killers, he adds, “they say they are men of religion but they are not men of religion. True men of religion would never use God’s name to carry out such despicable acts, they are plain and simply terrorists”.

Paul Bhatti, joined by the Grand Imam of Lahore and the Catholic Bishop of Lahore, have decided to build a bridge of dialogue across the countries religious divide. He says now more than ever the moderate voice of ‘men of true religion, be they Christian, Muslim or Hindu’ need to be heard.

Imam Syed Muhammad Abdul Khabir Azad, who was a personal friend of Shabaz Bhatti, points out that inter-religious dialogue has a forty year history in Pakistan. Paul Bhatti adds that the challenge now for Pakistani religious leaders “is religious formation in schools, churches and mosques”, to educate people against the propaganda of fundamentalist fringes.

“Religious discrimination, is growing day by day. Not because believers can not coexist with each other, but because there is a campaign of hatred created by a terrorist base that continues to use religion. We must fight this hatred. If we do not, there will be more victims. It is not just my brother in Pakistan there are bombs exploding every day and people being killed. This is, somehow, the first challenge”. Listen to the full report:
(In this photo provided by Vatican paper LOsservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI meets Paul Batthi, center, brother of the slain federal minister for minority affairs in Pakistan)