This first week of February is World Interfaith Harmony Week, a resolution unanimously adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2010.
World Interfaith Harmony Week focuses on promoting peaceful and harmonious relationships between people of different religions, faiths and belief systems. We are called in a special way this week to be inclusive and to help build a society where all belong, regardless of their race, colour or creed.
This week, 3-5 February, at the invitation of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Pope Francis will visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the first ever pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula.
“I am happy for this occasion the Lord has given me to write, on your dear land, a new page in the history of relations between religions,” Francis said in a video message to the people of the UAE on Thursday.
“Faith in God unites and does not divide, it draws us closer despite differences, it distances us from hostilities and aversion.”
Let us give thanks and pray for the witness this visit will give of “a new chapter in the history of relations between faiths”(Pope Francis).
