Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, head of the Comece association of Catholic bishops in the European Union, said recent Islamist terror attacks must not divide religious communities in Europe.
“If the objective of the terrorists is to divide us, we all together – the countries of the European Union but also Christians, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Jews – must say no,” he told the Italian news agency SIR.
“Europe shows the world that fanaticism makes no sense,” he said. Terrorists “cannot bear that this [European] project, based on common values, is possible.”
Cardinal Hollerich said radical Islamists may have struck now because of the pandemic crisis. “People in Europe are in anguish. They’re locked down, they’re afraid … the disease continues to circulate,” he said. “We know that anguish can turn into aggression.”
Asked about the Prophet Muhammad caricatures whose publication radical Islamists say they want to avenge, the cardinal said: “Freedom cannot be absolute. I think that freedom of expression must also take into account what others think, their feelings, especially religious feelings.”
He cited Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tuttito say freedom required fraternity to be able to work equally.
The cardinal said that Muslim leaders in Luxembourg wrote to him immediately after the Nice attack to express their horror at the murders. He said Tareq Oubrou, a leading French imam, had said “Muhammad would feel ashamed by the Nice attack.”
Meanwhile Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, co-president of Religions for Peace and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, called for “building bridges” after acts of violence in the name of religion in France and other places. “It is our obligation as faith leaders to model responses that are dignified, humane and merciful rather than vengeful,” he said in a statement of the Religions for Peace World Council on 4 November. “We, as representatives of the world’s diverse religious traditions, recommit ourselves to multi-religious respectful discourse,” said the statement.
Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, also called for Islamist atrocities to be addressed by further collaboration between Christians and Muslims. He said it is necessary to avoid the climate of “conflict between religions” during the homily at the concluding Mass of the annual Synod of the Maronite Church on 31 October in the Patriarchate of Bkerké.
Loading ...
