The Active Role of Vatican in Interreligious Dialogue.

 

The Second Vatican Council was the first ecumenical council in the history of the Church to give serious consideration to the Church’s relationship to the followers of other religions and to advocate interreligious dialogue as an integral dimension of her mission. As is generally recognized, the Declaration Nostra Aetate, although one of the shortest of all the documents of the Second Vatican Council, is one which has had a considerable impact on the life of the Church. This document has served to open the door for Catholics into the world of interreligious dialogues and since then had gone through several drafts and its relationship with other documents of the Council had varied. The leadership of Vatican has been engaged with the interreligiousdialogue according to the level of necessity they have considered to be in different periods. Some Popes have been obviously much more active in interreligious initiatives and activities than others. Pope Francis can be clearly observed to have taken the issue of dialogue as one of the top priorities during his leadership. Almost in every trip, Pope Francis seems to have had an interreligious or ecumenical moment. One very important meeting in this context came in February 2019 when he visited the United Arab Emirates and signed a declaration of the Human Fraternity Document for World Peace and Living Together with the Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University.