As part of his apostolic visit to Iraq, Pope Francis yesterday visited the ancient city of Ur, believed to be the birthplace of Abraham. He participated in an inter-religious meeting with leaders and members of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic communities, along with representatives of other small religious communities present in Iraq. The Catholic Herald's report of the encounter can be read here, and the second part of their commentary on Pope Francis' earlier meeting with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani places it in the context of a more specific Shiah-Christian dialogue in Iraq itself. After listening to testimonies from the different communities, Pope Francis addressed the meeting: the text of his address is at the Vatican website. It was a visit, and an event, that could only have uniquely taken place during a visit to Iraq, what a marketing executive might label a "unique selling point".
In the context of this meeting of Christian, Jewish and Islamic communities Abraham is described by Pope Francis as a common father in faith to all three religions, and to other believers and people of good will:
Today we, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with our brothers and sisters of other religions, honour our father Abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth.
In his "Prayer of the Children of Abraham", Pope Francis asks:
As children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham, a distinguished son of this noble and beloved country, to be our common father in faith.
This is entirely in keeping with the nature of this particular address being given to this very particular gathering. A Catholic theological treatise in a different context might distinguish between a providential nature of the fatherhood of Abraham for Islam and a revelatory nature of that fatherhood for Judaism and Christianity, but that is not to detract from the appropriateness of Pope Francis' words in Ur.
Whilst the figure of Abraham is a universal figure for religious faith - one strand in Pope Francis' address is a reminder that we need to look to the stars, to God, as we journey on earth, that we cannot live without that reference to God - he is also a figure for human fraternity. In so far as he represents a common fatherhood in religious faith, he can also represent a common origin to human society for many people and therefore to the kind of fraternity in which Christian and Moslem communities have worked together in restoring both churches and mosques in parts of Iraq.
His was a journey outwards, one that involved sacrifices. Abraham had to leave his land, home and family. Yet by giving up his own family, he became the father of a family of peoples. Something similar also happens to us: on our own journey, we are called to leave behind those ties and attachments that, by keeping us enclosed in our own groups, prevent us from welcoming God’s boundless love and from seeing others as our brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis' resounding words condemning the use of religion to justify violence make an appropriate end to this post, framed as they appear to me to particularly speak, though not exclusively, to those whose violence claims justification in Islamic religious belief:
From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters. Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion. We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings.
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