Joint call for peace at the Vatican 8 Jun 2014
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Joint call for peace at the Vatican

  •   Religious readings will be dedicated to peace
  • 6/8/2014
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    Pope Francis will host President Peres, Palestinian Authority President Abbas and delegations of Jewish, Christian and Islamic faith leaders at the Vatican, who will issue a joint call for peace to people across the world.
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    Pope Francis, President Peres and PA President Abbas plant an olive tree at the Vatican Pope Francis, President Peres and PA President Abbas plant an olive tree at the Vatican Copyright: GPO/Haim Zach
     
     
    (Communicated by the Office of the President)

    Following the invitation of Pope Francis during his visit to the region: Pope Francis, President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Abbas will issue a joint call for peace at a ceremony in the Vatican.

    President Shimon Peres, will leave on Sunday, June 8, 2014, for a special visit to the Vatican at the invitation of Pope Francis. At the center of the visit will be an event hosted by Pope Francis with President Peres, Palestinian Authority President Abbas and delegations of Jewish, Christian and Islamic faith leaders, at which they will issue a joint call for peace to people across the world. The ceremony, which will take place in the garden of the Vatican on Sunday, June 8, 2014 at 19:00 (local time in Rome), will be attended by delegations of rabbis, imams and Christian faith leaders

    The event has been designed to incorporate and respect all three religions and will include readings dedicated to each of the three religions - the Rabbis will read from the Tanach, the Christian leaders from the New Testament and the Imams from the Quran. All the readings will be dedicated to peace. After the religious readings, Pope Francis will read religious verses with President Peres and President Abbas which the three will choose and symbolize the yearning for peace.

    President Peres will fly to the Vatican at the head of a delegation consisting of Rabbis, Druze leaders and Imams and will call upon leaders of all faiths to work together to ensure that religion and the name of the Lord will not be used to justify bloodshed and terror. President Peres will place particular emphasis on the importance of inter-religious dialogue. The Israeli delegation, which was composed with the assistance of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, will consist of faith leaders from across Israel who will carry the message of peace. The delegation will include Rabbi Dr. Rasson Arussi of the Chief Rabbinate Council, Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, Rabbi David Rosen, the Spiritual Leader of the Druze faith in Israel Sheikh Moafaq Tarif and Chairman of the Muslim Community of Israel, Sheikh Mohammad Kiwan. The Palestinian delegation is also expected to include a faith delegation consisting of Islamic and Christian leaders.

    The event will take place in a location in the garden without religious symbols and which is not a place of prayer to ensure that it would be in accordance with Jewish tradition. Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yosef blessed President Peres for his work towards peace between nations and for his efforts to ensure religion is not used to justify terror and bloodshed, he also wished him luck for his visit.

    The event at the Vatican is taking place at the initiative of Pope Francis who announced his historic invitation during his visit to the Middle East. The Vatican is preparing to provide a live feed of the event to billions of people of faith across the world. In addition to his visit to the Vatican, President Peres will meet with political leadership of Italy including President Giorgio Napolitano and Minister of Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini.

     

  • From remarks by President Shimon Peres

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     President Peres calls for peace at the Vatican (Copyright: GPO/Haim Zach)

    Your Holiness,

    Your wisdom and modesty have gathered us here today.

    Wherever you go, you carry a renewed inspiration to trust in heaven, to love the people, and to care for the earth.   It is in that spirit that I have come here from Jerusalem, the cradle of the three monotheistic religions, and the vaybrant heart of the Jewish People. In Hebrew, the word Jerusalem and the word for peace, share the same root - Shalom. And it is with that prayer in our heart and that call to action that we stand together. From Jerusalem, I have come to call for Shalom - Peace.  Peace between nations. Peace between faiths. Peace between people. Peace for our children.

    The Book of Books commands us to walk the path of peace. It demands of us to toil for its realization.

     “Whoever loves life and desires to see good days. Let him turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.” This is a command to pursue peace. All year long. Every day. We greet each other with this blessing. Shalom. Salam. We must be worthy of the deep and demanding meaning of this blessing. 

    Peace does not come easy. It calls for sacrifice and compromise. Without peace, we are not complete. We have yet to achieve this mission of humanity. Even when peace seems distant, we must pursue it to bring it closer. And if we pursue peace with determination, with faith, we will reach it. And it will endure through all of us, as is written by Isaiah: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” 

    I was young and became old. I experienced war, I tasted peace. Never will I forget the bereaved families - parents and children - who paid the cost of war. And all my life I shall never stop to act for peace, for the sake of the generations to come. Let us all join hands and make it happen.

  • Invocation for peace by Pope Francis

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    Distinguished Presidents,

    I greet you with immense joy and I wish to offer you, and the eminent delegations accompanying you, the same warm welcome which you gave to me during my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

    I am profoundly grateful to you for accepting my invitation to come here and to join in imploring from God the gift of peace. It is my hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of a new journey where we seek the things that unite, so as to overcome the things that divide.

    I also thank Your Holiness, my venerable Brother Bartholomaios, for joining me in welcoming these illustrious guests. Your presence here is a great gift, a much-appreciated sign of support, and a testimony to the pilgrimage which we Christians are making towards full unity.

    Your presence, dear Presidents, is a great sign of brotherhood which you offer as children of Abraham. It is also a concrete expression of trust in God, the Lord of history, who today looks upon all of us as brothers and who desires to guide us in his ways.

    This meeting of prayer for peace in the Holy Land, in the Middle East and in the entire world is accompanied by the prayers of countless people of different cultures, nations, languages and religions: they have prayed for this meeting and even now they are united with us in the same supplication. It is a meeting which responds to the fervent desire of all who long for peace and dream of a world in which men and women can live as brothers and sisters and no longer as adversaries and enemies.

    Dear Presidents, our world is a legacy bequeathed to us from past generations, but it is also on loan to us from our children: our children who are weary, worn out by conflicts and yearning for the dawn of peace, our children who plead with us to tear down the walls of enmity and to set out on the path of dialogue and peace, so that love and friendship will prevail.

    Many, all too many, of those children have been innocent victims of war and violence, saplings cut down at the height of their promise. It is our duty to ensure that their sacrifice is not in vain. The memory of these children instils in us the courage of peace, the strength to persevere undaunted in dialogue, the patience to weave, day by day, an ever more robust fabric of respectful and peaceful coexistence, for the glory of God and the good of all.

    Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict: yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation; yes to sincerity and no to duplicity. All of this takes courage, it takes strength and tenacity.

    History teaches that our strength alone does not suffice. More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one, employing a variety of means, has succeeded in blocking it. That is why we are here, because we know and we believe that we need the help of God. We do not renounce our responsibilities, but we do call upon God in an act of supreme responsibility before our consciences and before our peoples. We have heard a summons, and we must respond. It is the summons to break the spiral of hatred and violence, and to break it by one word alone: the word “brother”. But to be able to utter this word we have to lift our eyes to heaven and acknowledge one another as children of one Father.

    To him, the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, I now turn, begging the intercession of the Virgin Mary, a daughter of the Holy Land and our Mother.

    Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!

    We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried…  But our efforts have been in vain.

    Now, Lord, come to our aid!  Grant us peace, teach us peace; guide our steps in the way of peace. Open our eyes and our hearts, and give us the courage to say: “Never again war!”; “With war everything is lost”. Instil in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace.

    Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love, you created us and you call us to live as brothers and sisters. Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness.

    Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words “division”, “hatred” and “war” be banished from the heart of every man and woman. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Renew our hearts and minds, so that the word which always brings us together will be “brother”, and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam!

    Amen.