Vatican statement for Ramadan: Christians and Muslims should unite against religious violence

June 19, 2015

In a message to the world’s Muslims, issued for the start of Ramadan, the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue has called for cooperative action against religious violence.

The Vatican document addresses Muslims who have suffered from religious violence, losing relatives and friends or witnessing the destruction of their homes and heritage. These acts of violence are grave, the document says. “However, what makes them even more heinous is the tentative of justifying them in the name of religion.”

The document goes on to call for education to “teach the sacred character of life and the derived dignity of every person.” Killing in the name of religion, the Vatican says, is “a double crime: against God and the very person.”

Avoiding a clear pronouncement that the world’s most egregious campaigns of religious violence have been conducted by Islamic extremists, the Pontifical Council says that Christians and Muslims should work together for peace and pray for “justice, of peace and security in the world; for those who have deviated from the true path of life and commit violence in the name of religion.”

 

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Further information:

• Christians and Muslims, together to counter violence perpetrated in the name of religion (VIS)