Aliran mourns the passing of Pope Francis, a brave, towering and progressive leader whose influence and desire for peace extended beyond the Catholic Church.
This was a religious leader who sided with the oppressed, the poor and the marginalised in society.
Much has been said about him but his relevance to us in Malaysia is also profound: he was instrumental in building bridges between Christians and Muslims.
Standing out was his meeting in 2019 with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, at the UAE. It was the first visit by a pope to the Arabian peninsula.
There, the two leaders signed the historic Abu Dhabi declaration, the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”.
In the document, they declared that “religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood”.
The document reiterated that freedom is “a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings”.
This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. “Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.”
They expressed hope that the declaration would be an appeal “to every upright conscience that rejects deplorable violence and blind extremism… to those who cherish the values of tolerance and fraternity that are promoted and encouraged by religions”.
Pope Francis touched many through his compassion and deep concern for the tortured, persecuted and killed, in particular the victims in Gaza and Ukraine. Every evening, since 9 October 2023, he would phone Gaza’s Holy Family Church, offering comfort to the 600 people – Christians and Muslims – sheltering in the church and parish school.
Last year, he criticised the deaths of Palestinian children in Israeli military strikes in Gaza. He also slammed the “ugly” Israeli bombings of schools on the pretext of striking Hamas militants. In a book, he cited international experts as saying that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.
He also expressed sorrow over the impact of colonialism on native populations. At the second World Meeting of Popular Movement in Bolivia in 2015, he lashed out against unbridled capitalism and damage to the ecosystems which was brutally punishing so many people. Behind this suffering and destruction, he said, was a stench from the “dung of the devil” – the unfettered pursuit of money.
“Do we realise that that system has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature? … let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change.”
This system is by now intolerable, he said: “Farm workers find it intolerable, labourers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable … The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable.”
The pope called for a different kind of globalisation – a change in our lives, in our neighbourhoods, in our everyday reality – that could affect the entire world. Global interdependence calls for global answers to local problems, he said. “The globalisation of hope, a hope which springs up from peoples and takes root among the poor, must replace the globalisation of exclusion and indifference!”
Few leaders could have put what is at stake more lucidly. Francis’ words will continue to resonate in our world.
Aliran executive committee
22 April 2025
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