Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue

Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue Series Editors Gerard Mannion Department of Theology Georgetown University Washington, DC, USA Mark D. Chapman Ripon College University of Oxford Oxford, UK Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue series publishes scholarship on interreligious encounters and dialogue in relation to the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges, aspirations, and elements of interreligious conversation. Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways, means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with renewed energy for the twenty-first century. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14561 Harold Kasimow • Alan Race Editors Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue Religious Thinkers Engage with Recent Papal Initiatives Editors Harold Kasimow Alan Race Grinnell College World Congress of Faiths Grinnell, IA, USA London, UK Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue ISBN 978-3-319-96094-4 ISBN 978-3-319-96095-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96095-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951603 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design by Friedhelm Steinen-Broo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book is dedicated to our friends and colleagues across the world committed to interreligious dialogue and collaboration for a better future and in particular to those involved with the interreligious and intercultural organizations committed to inquiry and learning across boundaries—the World Congress of Faiths (London), Common Ground (Deerfield, Illinois), and the Parliament of the World’s Religions. FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? I have been very kindly invited by Harold Kasimow and Alan Race to write a Foreword to a collection of chapters contributed to this book by mem- bers of major world religious traditions regarding their responses to Pope Francis and his views on interreligious dialogue. In writing this Foreword, my first idea was to summarize the different chapters in some way, empha- sizing what I understood to be the core of each of them and concluding with my own perspective on the theme. This would have been a purely intellectual approach. Then the memory of a particular moment suddenly came to my mind. During one of our meetings in his office in the archdiocesan building in Buenos Aires, I said to my friend Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, “I am con- sidering the idea of writing a book about God.” I asked for his partnership on the project. He was not enthusiastic about the idea. One month later he called me and said, “Let us write a book of dialogues, you and I, about the burning themes that matter to ordinary people.” This was the begin- ning of the book of dialogues that we wrote together, On Heaven and Earth. We began speaking about God, the devil, and atheists and continued with fundamentalism, death, globalization, politics and power, money, poverty, the Holocaust, socialism, Peronism, and so on. He encouraged me to assume a prophetic attitude, to express deep concepts through sim- ple words and phrases, to put aside all intellectual sophistications, and to speak to everyone. Therefore, I have decided in this Foreword to describe some moments that I have shared with him and my feelings about them. I do this to transmit who this person, my friend, is. We address each other in our correspondence vii viii FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? as “my dear brother,” not as a mere formality, but in order to express the deep feeling we have for each other. The chapters of this book analyze with great wisdom different aspects of the preaching and religious leadership of Pope Francis. This Foreword tries to describe some intimate aspects of the person, the core of his preaching and leadership. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope—the 266th after Peter—on 13 March 2013. I watched the direct television broadcast in my house in Buenos Aires when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran proclaimed that my friend was the new head of the Catholic Church, which includes 1.3 billion people. During the previous three years, we had worked together on the prep- aration of the book of dialogues I mentioned earlier. We presented it at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary on 1 December 2010 and went on to record 31 television programs in which we continued dialoguing about pressing themes of our time. During those years, we used to meet two or more times each month in very creative dialogical encounters. The dialogues were spontaneous, which posed a special challenge for the record- ing of the programs. Despite that, it was very seldom that we were asked to modify something we had recorded. At the end of each session we decided upon the topics to discuss at the next meeting, and after the mod- erator, Marcelo Figueroa’s introduction, we expressed our ideas through an extemporaneous back-and-forth. Each meeting was a great spiritual experience for us. During our conversations, so as not to speak on top of my friend’s words, and to respond to them promptly with my own ideas, I used to look with great attention into his face as he spoke. Years later, when Cardinal Tauran announced the identity of the new pope, my friend’s face appeared in my mind’s eye a few seconds before he actually came into view on the television screen. After the first wave of emotion passed, the next sensation I had took the form of a question: How is our friendship going to continue? How are we going to be able to work together with an ocean separating us? On the Buenos Aires afternoon of 18 March 2013, the eve of the day when Francis would be inaugurated in the Vatican as pope, I received a call on my cell phone. To my “Hello,” I heard in reply a very familiar voice, “Hello,” says Bergoglio, “they’ve caught me here and are not letting me back.” The purpose of the call was to speak with his friend after the revo- lutionary event that transformed his life and to let me know very clearly that, in a new way, we were going to continue to be in contact. We spoke about several subjects and when the conversation came to its end he told me, “Write down the email address which I am spelling to you now, so we can continue to be in touch.” FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? ix Thus, began a new time in our friendship. We had begun to get to know each other in the Cathedral of Buenos Aires, to which—by invitation of the President of Argentina—I repre- sented the Jewish community at the special mass in honor of the national Independence Day. At first, Bergoglio was one of the auxiliary bishops under Cardinal Antonio Quarracino. Afterward, he became his coadjutor bishop and finally he succeeded him as archbishop of the city in 1998. When I heard Bergoglio’s homilies on those occasions, they reminded me of the style of criticism used by the prophets which has resonances with Jesus’s preaching as well. In front of the president of the nation and his cabinet and many other governmental authorities, he championed the rights of the poor and of all the abandoned people in Argentinean society. I used to tell him that his way of speaking seemed to be very much inspired by the prophets. Through frequent football jokes, Bergoglio narrowed the gap that I felt was between us. He is older than me by 14 years (I was then in my late 40s and he in his early 60s), and he was the archbishop of one of the most important Catholic cities in the world. I was then the Rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, an important position but very far from the political, religious, and social influence that he carried then. Years after he used to insist that we had been standing on the same level. I never asked him why he sought me out. I guess he was sympathetic to the articles I wrote in La Nación—the newspaper he used to read daily— about the importance of interreligious dialogue or condemnation of terror- ist acts and movements in the world or demanding the judicial prosecution of the attackers of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

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