Vatican News carried a report of a meeting between Pope Leo and Muslim leaders at an interfaith colloquium.
In his address, the Pope drew attention to the gifts of compassion and empathy which he said are “essential attitudes” of both Christianity and Islam. For Muslims, compassion is a gift bestowed by God in the hearts of believers, and God is sometimes referred to as ‘the ever-compassionate’. For Christians, the Pope said that divine compassion “becomes visible and tangible” in the person of Jesus, where God “goes beyond seeing and hearing” human suffering, and instead experiences it Himself, becoming “the living embodiment of compassion”.
Compassion and empathy, he says, are therefore “not something additional or optional” for Christians and Muslims. And that they have “social implications” for believers in both religions.
He thus called on both Christians and Muslims to “revive humanity where it has grown cold” and “transform indifference into solidarity”.
Read the full article here.