By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service • Posted September 10, 2024

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNS) — While members of every religion must be free to profess and practice their faith, they also should recognize that members of other religions have that right, too, and they all are searching for God, Pope Francis said.

Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque, welcomed the pope to the mosque compound Sept. 5 and led him directly to the “tunnel of friendship,” a wide underground walkway that connects the mosque and the Catholic cathedral across the busy street.

Like the pope, the imam was dressed in white from head to toe and greeted Pope Francis with a kiss on the cheek. At the end of the meeting, Umar put an arm around the pope’s shoulder and kissed him on the top of the head. Pope Francis, who was seated in his wheelchair, took the imam’s hand and kissed it.

Earlier, facing the entrance to the tunnel, Pope Francis had told the imam and donors who helped build it, “When we think of a tunnel, we might easily imagine a dark pathway. This could be frightening, especially if we are alone. Yet here it is different, for everything is illuminated.”

“I would like to tell you, however, that you are the light that illuminates it,” the pope said, “and you do so by your friendship, by the harmony you cultivate, the support you give each other, and by journeying together, which leads you in the end toward the fullness of light.”

The pope and imam signed “The Istiqlal Declaration,” a short document committing members of both religious communities to defending human dignity, especially when threatened with violence, and to defending the integrity of creation.

“The values shared by our religious traditions should be effectively promoted in order to defeat the culture of violence and indifference afflicting our world,” the declaration said. “Indeed, religious values should be directed toward promoting a culture of respect, dignity, compassion, reconciliation and fraternal solidarity in order to overcome both dehumanization and environmental destruction.”

Engkus Ruswana, a leader of Majelis Luhur Kepercayaan Indonesia, an organization for followers of Indigenous religions, said his faith’s priority “is humanity and community, and the relationship between the human and nature. Indigenous religions, you know, have a good relationship between human beings and nature. Our principle is that we have to care for the Earth, for the world.”

In a large tent draped with the white and red colors of the Indonesian flag, Ruswana joined the imam, the pope and other representatives of the country’s religious communities, including Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Confucians.

The formal meeting began with the chanting of a passage from the Quran by Kayla Nur Syahwa, 16, who won a national Quran recitation contest for children with disabilities, and a reading from the Gospels by a Catholic priest.

Pope Francis asked the religious leaders to consider how the tunnel can be a metaphor for the faith life of Indonesians by providing a meeting ground between the prayer spaces of two communities.

The tunnel, he said, should be a sign that “all of us, together, each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God and contribute to building open societies, founded on reciprocal respect and mutual love, capable of protecting against rigidity, fundamentalism and extremism, which are always dangerous and never justifiable.”

“The visible aspects of religions — the rites, practices and so on — are a heritage that must be protected and respected,” the pope said. “However, we could say that what lies ‘underneath,’ what runs underground, like the ‘tunnel of friendship,’ is the one root common to all religious sensitivities: the quest for an encounter with the divine, the thirst for the infinite that the Almighty has placed in our hearts, the search for a greater joy and a life stronger than any type of death, which animates the journey of our lives and impels us to step out of ourselves to encounter God.”

The Rev. Kriese Anki Gosal, a Presbyterian minister and vice general secretary of the Communion of Churches, the main ecumenical body in Indonesia, said, “The visit of the pope is very amazing for us. We want to have our pope’s message.”

When asked about using “our” to refer to the pope, she said, “He is the pope of all people. He has messages we must pass on,” whether one is a Catholic or not, a Christian or not.

The Rev. Jacklevyn Manuputty, general secretary of the ecumenical group that includes 97 churches and Christian communities, insisted Christians — who make up about 10% of Indonesia’s population — are not minorities. “We are citizens, not minorities. ‘Majority-minority’ are political terms that can and have been misused.”

“We are living in one of the most diverse countries in the world, so dialogue is our lifestyle,” he said. “All over the world there is a growing tendency of populism and identity politics based on race or religion — dialogue is how we promote authenticity.”