Pope in Indonesia: Enhancing Interreligious Dialogue, Overcoming Conflict

In the first speech of his long journey between Asia and Oceania, Pope Francis spoke of religious differences, extremism, and the efforts that societies must make to overcome conflict and poverty.

The Holy Father, in his address to President Joko Widodo and members of the diplomatic corps, praised Indonesia as a country with a high birth rate. “The Catholic Church wishes to increase interreligious dialog,” Francis explained. “In this way it will be possible to eliminate prejudice and create an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, which is necessary to meet common challenges, including the fight against extremism and intolerance, which, by distorting religion, try to impose themselves using deception and violence.”

The Pope emphasized that there are too many instances in the world where faith comes to the fore, but it can be manipulated and “foment divisions and increase hatred” rather than build cooperation, dialogue, and peace. On the contrary, there are contexts in which it seems that one can do without religion entirely: in these cases, “it is believed that one can or should ignore the search for God’s blessing, considering it unnecessary for the individual and civil society, which they must promote by themselves, by their own efforts, but in doing so they often encounter frustration and failure.”

A parallel can be drawn here between Indonesia’s geographical configuration, consisting of many islands washed by the sea, and peaceful coexistence: just as the waters touch all the country’s territories, “so too does mutual respect for the specific cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious characteristics of all the human groups that make up Indonesia, they are the important connective tissue that makes the Indonesian people united and proud.”