Pope Presented A More Inclusive, Non-Sectarian and Non-Europeanised Christianity
By M
H Ilias
March 12,
2021
The visit
of Pope Francis to Iraq, concluded in the beginning of this week, has led to
speculation about its possible motives and urgency. Most agree on one thing: It
is not politically calculated. Taking cues from his earlier gestures, one can
safely say that the current Pope wouldn’t “do a Pope John Paul II”, whose
political interventions during the Cold War in many ways served the interests
of the Western Bloc led by the US. This visit, though, is a culmination of a
series of failed efforts of the last two decades to bring a Pope to the
birthplace of Abraham, that were initiated during the tenure of Pope John Paul
II in 2000.
Pope Francis meets with Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, in Najaf, Iraq March 6, 2021. (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
office via Reuters)
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The theory
that connects the visit of the head of Catholic Church to one of the major
theatres of the US-Iran rivalry with the attempt of the US President Joe Biden
to patch up the US’s strained relationship with Iran appears to be flawed. More
likely is the analysis by historian Ibrahim al-Marashi, who compares Pope
Francis’s visit to the journey that St. Francis of Assisi, a Catholic preacher
and mystic, made some 800 years ago to the Middle East to heal the wounds that
Crusade-induced violence caused in both Christian and Muslim societies. One of
the highlights of St. Francis’s trip was his meeting with Sultan al-Malik
al-Kamil, nephew of Saladin, who led the Muslim army against the Crusader
states in the Levant. Pope Francis, on his part, began his journey with meeting
one of the world’s leading Sunni clerics, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam
of Al-Azhar in 2017 and making a historic call for a cross-faith commitment to
human fraternity.
St.
Francis’s journey in the 13th century, though partially successful in terms of
promoting peace and reconciliation between two warring communities, resulted in
re-orienting policies of various missionary groups, including his own
Franciscan order, towards a peaceful coexistence with Muslims.
Today,
there is hostility and mutual distrust between the people of two major faiths.
The rise of “cultural Christianity”, a proxy for Islamophobia and hostility
towards migrants, makes the situation worse in parts of Europe and the United
States. The crisis in the Islamic world deepens with the emergence of movements
with a sectarian vision. The Pope’s interventions at this critical time,
therefore, have more than a symbolic value.
With his
efforts to reach out to various sects of Christianity in the East, the Pope
intends to present a different, though not new, version of Christianity, which
is more inclusive, non-denominational, non-sectarian and non-Europeanised. What
one can reasonably assume from this move is his wish to make Christianity more
appealing not just to Christians in the east, but to the followers of all
Abrahamic religions. That is perhaps why Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, found a
pivotal position in his itinerary.
What
figured recurrently in the pontiff’s speech was the necessity of reviving an
Abrahamic tradition for the common future of the communities. In Ur, the Pope
said, “we seem to have returned home”. At many places, he greeted gatherings
from different Semitic faiths with slogans such as “You are all brothers”, the
words of Matthew’s gospel. This can be read as a significant move to create a
counter-narrative to the theses presenting Islam as the “other”, alien to the
Judeo-Christian tradition in the West.
Prior to
visiting Iraq, the Pope travelled to Jordan and Palestine in 2014, Egypt in
2017 and the UAE and Morocco in 2019. He met many prominent Muslim scholars for
initiating interfaith dialogue. All his positive gestures have created
resonances in the Muslim world so far. But the fact remains that the sectarian
violence in Iraq is intimately associated with the colonial past of the
country; and the cynical use of religion by colonial forces to protect their
own interests. A move which does not address this past, therefore, may not
yield the desired result.
Original
Headline:
Source: The Indian Express
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/pope-presented-more-inclusive,-non/d/124521