Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Official Report 920KB pdf

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection, and our time for reflection leader is Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, formerly head of the pontifical council for interreligious dialogue and the papal nuncio in Egypt.

Presiding Officer, members of the Scottish Parliament, I thank you for giving me the honour of addressing you this afternoon.

As you may know, I belong to the Society of Missionaries of Africa, known as the White Fathers. The society has long been established in Scotland, and has had and still has many distinguished Scottish members. As a young boy, I started off my training to be a missionary by spending three months at St Boswell’s, in the beautiful Tweed valley.

Our society was founded in Algeria and its first work was among Muslims, responding to a humanitarian need caused by an outbreak of cholera. It is in the field of interreligious dialogue, particularly Christian-Muslim relations, that I have worked as a missionary.

Interreligious dialogue has been defined in an official Vatican document as meeting the followers of other religions

“in order to walk together toward truth and to work together in projects of common concern”.

In other words, it is an on-going process. We can never say, “We’ve made it; we’re there. We can now rest on our laurels”. We have always to be ready to begin again, because tensions arise and conflicts break out, and these issues need to be overcome. Moreover, it means walking together, creating relationships and building up friendship, which cannot be done by one group alone. As Pope John Paul II said in Assisi, at the conclusion of the world day of prayer for peace,

“Either we learn to walk together in peace and harmony, or we drift apart and ruin ourselves and others”.

That dialogue implies openness to others, appreciation of the values of the respective religions, awareness of the needs of those who are different from us and willingness to create the necessary trust in order to act together. It means having a wider vision than just one’s own religion or religious denomination and a readiness to work for the common good.

In the multicultural and multireligious society that Scotland has become, there is a great need for this on-going dialogue and co-operation. I would like to take this opportunity of saluting and applauding all the initiatives that have been taken and the efforts that are being made. May the one God, who is that truth drawing us on, bless and sustain all those efforts, so that Scotland may continue to be an example to the world.