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All in Good Faith
An event which attracted much interest was The Day of Prayer for World Peace at Assisi on
October 27th, 1986. Religious leaders from around the world responded to the Pope's invitation to join him in a day of prayer and fasting for peace. The event was televised across much of Europe and widely reported in newspapers across the world.
The day began at The Church of St Mary of the Angels with a welcome from the Pope. He denied any intention of seeking a religious consensus or of making a concession to religious relativism. During the day, time was allowed for each faith community to offer its own prayers in different parts of the city. Then, in the afternoon, all made their way to the Lower St Francis Square. The ceremony began with the choir singing 'Da Pacem'. Then each faith offered its prayers for peace. The book of prayers stressed that 'each act of prayer, which is followed by a pause for reflection, is quite separate' (21). It was made very clear in the official literature that people were invited to be together to pray and not to pray together. The event was of 'a serial interfaith character'.
Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, President of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, insisted that no syncretism was intended. 'We have come from many religious traditions around the world, we come together in complete faithfulness to our own religious traditions, each well aware of the identity of our own faith commitment. We are here together without any trace of syncretism. This is what makes the richness and the value of this prayer encounter...... What we will do now, offering our own prayers, one after the other, gathered in this place, should make manifest to all and to ourselves how, in the identity of each, we are all called to pray and work for the great good of peace.
Differences are thereby not
suppressed, but rather affirmed' (22).
Subsequent World Days of Prayer for Peace were held at Mt Hiei in Japan and at Mornington Bay in Australia and the tradition has been continued by the Fellowship of St Eggidio. The Assisi Day of Prayer for World Peace, together with the World Wide Fund for Nature's interfaith celebrations which were also held at Assisi (23) encouraged Roman Catholics and some Christians of other traditions to join more readily in interfaith prayer. In 1991, Pope John Paul II, recalling the Day at Assisi, called on Christians to join with people of other faiths in working and praying for peace (24).
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