Is there a shift among the world?s religions towards active peacemaking? The Tablet?s assistant editor, who was in Assisi last week with representatives of the world?s religions (see p.27), thinks so. But the obstacles remain formidable.

TWENTY-FIVE miles north of Assisi, where last week some 250 representatives of 12 religions summoned the world to peace, a famous thirteenth-century wolf stalked the woods, preying on the citizens of an Umbrian town.

The people of Gubbio were so afraid of the wolf ? which could strike suddenly and viciously, overwhelming even men armed with pitchforks ? that after a time they stopped venturing beyond the city walls. Hearing of this, St Francis went to Gubbio, where the people begged him to remain. But the saint left the town by the Roman gate, and crossed a large area strewn with human bones, towards the forest. When the wolf ran out of the woods and towards Francis, baring its fangs, the saint stood his ground and commanded it in the name of Christ to cease doing harm. The wolf lay down at Francis?s feet and, after listening to his peace terms, signalled its agreement to them by placing its paw in the saint?s right hand. For two years afterwards, the redeemed beast made itself at home in Gubbio, going from door to door and being fed by the townspeople, until it died. The wolf was heartily mourned and buried in a chapel dedicated to St Francis.

This story is sometimes told piously, as if the wolf was suborned by a magic elixir, with St Francis as a sort of shaman. But there is more to this medieval tale of conflict mediation than meets the eye. Note that Francis comes from the outside, without any agenda or vested interest except peace with justice; and that he comes unarmed, his weakness being his strength. He starts from the assumption that no one can be defined as so barbarian or evil as not to deserve even a word; and he embarks on a dialogue which the townspeople see initially as madness and possibly treason. Soaked in the empathy that comes from prayer, Francis also comprehends what lies at the root of the violence (a wolf?s appetite being proverbial). Brother Wolf, he tells his hairy interlocutor, since you are willing to make peace, I promise that as long as you live, I will make sure to provide for you, to spare you from hunger, which is the real reason for your attacks.

I thought about the wolf and the friar last week in Assisi, as I sat listening to the world?s religious leaders clamour for peace in the wind-buffeted, canopied lower square of St Francis?s Basilica. Dr Konrad Raiser, the evangelical general secretary of the World Council of Churches, was one of the representatives. The previous week this tall and gentle German had given a seminar in London in which he spoke of a qualitative change in the world. Weapons were now multiplying, and a new culture of violence was spreading, he noted; and the Churches were being asked to mediate in those conflicts more than ever. There was, he said, a desperate search for forces that can stem the spread of violence.

Raiser was in London to promote the WCC?s Decade to Overcome Violence, 2001?2010. The scheme was inspired by experience in Rio de Janeiro, where some years ago a citizens? coalition succeeded in bringing about a city-wide stoppage to protest against violence. The Brazilian city is one of seven ? the others are Belfast, Boston, Durban, Colombo, Kingston and Suva ? which will form part of a worldwide network in which practical steps towards peacemaking will be studied and shared.

Faced with conflict, Raiser believes, it is no longer enough for church leaders to roll their eyes and wag their fingers. Religions, he said, must now be mobilised for peace, to act as vehicles of constant communication and truthful information, countering the logic of violence with another that will always seem foolish in human eyes. The examples may be all too few, but history shows ? famously in Mozambique in 1992 ? that the presence of religious peacemakers in violent situations can end conflicts.

The great twentieth-century international political institutions have failed to stem the tides of war; could it now be the turn of the religions? But if so, the Churches need to go beyond traditional just war doctrine which views violence as intrinsic to human nature, requiring an ethical framework to contain it. In Assisi, a New York rabbi, Israel Singer, echoed the WCC leader?s argument. We should not only pray for but also participate in making peace, he said, because peace shouldn?t be left to the generals and the statesmen ? it?s too important.

Religions are well qualified for peacemaking: the one God of all, not the global marketplace, is the only true universal. But begging peace from him in Assisi proved problematic. The Vatican, nervous at suspicions of syncretism, organised things so that the world?s faith leaders did not pray together but in different places in the same town at the same time. And when Cardinal Francis Arinze said the ten-point commitment to peace read out at the end of the Assisi gathering was made by all the faiths present before the living God, I could not help recalling Pope John Paul?s remark in his eve-of-millennium book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, that Buddhism was in large measure an atheistic system. If the Church was so anxious to point up the borders between faiths, I wondered, how easy would it be to appeal to God beyond those borders?

Samuel P. Huntington?s much-discussed theory of a clash of religious civilisations seemed interesting before 11 September last year, when the terrorists plunged planes into the World Trade Centre in God?s name. Now it looks coherent. The Harvard professor?s view, that religious fault-lines have come to replace those of ideology and nationality, seems to be demonstrated the world over ? in the Middle East, Chechnya, Indonesia, Kashmir, Northern Ireland. It is true, as Pope John Paul said in his closing address at Assisi, that these tragic conflicts often result from an unjustified association of religion with nationalistic, political and economic interests or concerns of other kinds. Nevertheless, religions fall all too quickly either side of these divides, glaring at each other over their scriptures.

By creating a common philosophy of life among its followers, religion separates them from the rest of humanity, which can create a fertile breeding ground for prejudice, intolerance and antagonism. Where religions coincide with other divisions ? race, political power, social class, economic distribution ? they usually harden them. For every (usually unheard) preacher?s call to peace, there are two extremists willing to commit or justify violence in God?s name. As Rabbi Singer put it, religious leaders have always spoken of peace but in practice, religions have served to foment scores of horrendous and bloody wars.

Hence the urgent need for dialogue between religions to counteract the human dynamic which drives wedges between them. Whatever its limitations ? a stiffness and staginess that were not present in 1986; the preference for speeches over prayer; an excessive emphasis on the Pope ? the fact that Assisi happened at all shows that such a counter-dynamic is both possible and necessary.

Was Assisi just a well-meaning attempt by a few dozen religious men and women of peace to counteract the tendency of faiths to fanaticise and divide? Perhaps that it is how it still looks to much of the media; perhaps that is all it will turn out to have been. But seeing the passion of these prayerful men and women of all colours, I was struck by a strange kind of hope: that the future is now pointing to a time when the religions, acting increasingly in concert, cease to be harnessed to war and instead take centre stage in the world as agents of peace.

The next day, I stayed on in Assisi, waking to a town suddenly empty of colours and crowds. There was no time to reach Gubbio to see the memorial to Umbria?s famous quadruped; I stood instead by the basilica and watched the scaffolding come down, clearing as it did more and more of the view over the Vale of Spoleto.

And just then I had a strange, foolish vision: of a council of leaders of all the world?s faiths that would meet regularly, like this, to consider the conflicts across the globe ? not just those which had spilled over into violence, but those that were likely to. After praying and meditating, the religious leaders would quote from their scriptures and traditions, publicly shunning attempts to link their faiths with violence and injustice. They would listen carefully to each other, sensitive to any instance of a faith community profiting from the injustice which oppresses another. They would hear each other?s hunger and seek to respond to it. The business done, they would appoint peacemakers, representing not one faith but the God who is above and in all faiths, to go among the world?s warring factions to beg for a change of heart.

In my imagination, I had no idea where this council of religious leaders should meet ? perhaps in one of the seven cities identified by the World Council of Churches. But outside the council building I saw clearly the statue of a well-fed wolf, its paw in the palm of a friar?s hand.

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