Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

5 ear Friends. Rome welcomes here today at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the representatives of different religious tradi- tions from all over the world for a time of multireligious sharing and witnessing on “Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation”. As Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interre- ligious Dialogue, on behalf of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who is our President, I am happy to welcome all of you, and let me mention in particular HE Faisal Bin Muammar, Secretary General of the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID). As you know, the Holy See is a Founding Observer of the International Dialogue Centre that organized this meeting on the occasion of the Holy Year of Mercy. In Misericordiae Vultus , the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee of Mercy, HH Pope Francis expressed the wish that celebrating the mercy of God will foster an encounter with other religious traditions and open us to even more fervent dialogue so that we might know and understand one another better, eliminate every form of closed-mindedness and disrespect, and drive out every form of violence and discrimination (cfr. Misericordiae Vultus , n. 23). Religions are the living expression of the soul of peo- ples and each religion testifies to the fact that the human person has been in search of God for thousands of years. The Catholic Church has been involved in dialogue with religious traditions in every part of the world, at varying levels and with different degrees of intensity. As Catholics, we are urged by Jesus to be the “yeast and ferment” in the midst of the world. Therefore, with the occasion of the Jubilee of Mercy, our task is then to pro- claim the merciful God made Man who turns His gaze towards all men and women, excluding none. We are to be witnesses, as HH Pope Francis urges us, of a Church that goes out untiringly to proclaim a merciful God reviving, in a world tired of violence and pain, a profound desire for mercy. Saint John Paul II also reminds us that “Modern man often anxiously wonders about the solution to the ter- rible tensions which have built up in the world and which entangle humanity. And if at times man lacks the courage to utter the word “mercy”, or if in his conscience, empty of religious content, he does not find the equivalent, so much Welcome and Opening Remarks His Excellency Bishop Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, mccj, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Board Member of the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) D HE Bishop Ayuso (right) with Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh INTRODUCTORY WORDS