Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

2 Welcome and Opening Remarks His Excellency Faisal Bin Muaammar, KAICIID Secretary General minences, Excellencies, esteemed friends. This morning we were given a priceless gift. We learned from HH Pope Francis of the power of mercy. I am deeply moved by his words. He said that mercy is indeed a fundamental, a central and an essential value for all religions. It is also a privilege to be able to join you at this sym- posium to celebrate how mercy brings peace. I wish to thank the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and in particular Bishop Ayuso for their initiative to hold this interreligious symposium. Mercy is, I believe, at the core of all world faiths and religious traditions. It is the non-exclusive, universal message of prophets and men and women of faith – a word, a concept, a way of living that is fundamental to our humanity and obligatory for human compassion and coexistence. Mercy completes us, and its absence from faith, in my opinion, is akin to loss of faith. It is an essential human attribute and a basic life instinct which gives order to all living things. My personal understanding of mercy stems from my own Muslim faith, where the Merciful is one of the ninety-nine attributes of God, mentioned in the Holy Qur’an. I am reminded of God’s mercy each time I pray by reciting the name “the Merciful” during my prayers. My extensive work in interreligious dialogue, my many encounters with men and women of all faiths and traditions, have been testament to the fact that mercy is alive and is a driving factor for those who seek to help the many in our world that have been lost to mistrust, hatred and violence, and to rediscover mercy. The absence of mercy in our world today does not mean that mercy is non-existent between human beings. However mercy is often depicted by the media, advertise- ments and common stereotypes as a useless life-principle and fruitless in promoting communication between people. The motive behind this over-simplistic generali- sation about mercy is to deliberately negate its power of influencing morals in the modern world context. The question I ask is this: Why has mercy become so absent in our world? I would say that the answer lies in the fact that the modern world, in its legal, moral and international relations, has abandoned adherence to the guiding values of religion, and has denied them any part that they could play in the enforcement and application of international pacts. As a direct result of the path taken by mankind of distancing itself from the value of mercy as a core pre- requisite for our humanity, we witness a world today full of misery for millions. E HE Faisal Bin Muaammar with Austrian Ambassador, HE Dr. Alfons Kloss and Spanish Minister Counselor, HE Luis Fernando de Segovia INTRODUCTORY WORDS