Meeting aims to help people learn to coexist amid their diversity

Published: 2006-01-17

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic organizers expressed hope that a Washington meeting of major world religious leaders April 26-27 will help people learn to live together amid their diversity after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sparked a focus on their cultural differences. "It is a duty to underline that coexistence is possible in this world during the difficult period after 9/11," said Italian Msgr. Ambrogio Spreafico, vice president of the Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based lay organization that is the meeting's main organizer and one of its sponsors. "In the U.S. we want to underline the reality of a society which is already pluralistic," said Msgr. Spreafico, rector of the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome. "People in the U.S. are living in coexistence but are unaware of it. There are tensions," he said. "We think dialogue is the answer to the clash of civilizations." Msgr. Spreafico briefed journalists Jan. 13 about the meeting, called the 2006 International Prayer for Peace. The briefing was held at Jesuit-run Georgetown University, another meeting sponsor and the site of the events. The other sponsors are The Catholic University of America and the Archdiocese of Washington.

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