Date: 2006-08-23

Interreligious Meeting Planned in Assisi

20 Years After World Day of Prayer for Peace

ROME, AUG. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Twenty years after the World Day of Prayer for Peace, the Italian city of Assisi will again be a point of interreligious meeting and prayer on Sept. 4-5.

The World Day that Pope John Paul II convoked in St. Francis' city in October 1986 was unprecedented. It saw, gathered alongside the Pontiff, representatives of the great world religions, from the Dalai Lama to the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury.

A process got under way there, which the Community of Sant'Egidio took especially to heart, engendering in turn the International Encounters of Religions.

These meetings have progressed, year after year, across Italy's main cities and European capitals -- and recently Washington, D.C. -- offering an opportunity for dialogue and for religious differences to be surmounted.

The theme of the next interreligious world meeting and of the day of prayer for peace, which the Sant'Egidio Community and the Umbrian bishops' conference are promoting, is "Religions and Cultures in Dialogue for a World of Peace."

The Rome-based ecclesial movement explained that "At a time marked by terrorism and war, as well as by efforts toward dialogue and reconciliation, religion has assumed a prominent role in public life and in the conflict of identities. Religions are ever more exposed to the danger of becoming instruments of extremism."

Therefore, from Assisi, the reflection of the world's great religions on dialogue between cultures will be highlighted as key to defuse the conflict of civilizations and to provide an axis of a globalization that is not merely market-driven.