Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue was speaking in an interview with Vatican Radio Aug. 12, following his return from a trip to Japan.In Japan, he said, Catholic dialogue with other religions is carried out “at the level of the local Churches, not at the top (leadership) levels; (but) at the levels of the parishes, schools and universities.”
The Catholic Church in Japan has “a prestigious range of schools and universities,” he said, “and these furnish a terrain of spontaneous dialogue of life between the different religions.”
He said he was very impressed by the fact that all this dialogue “is developed in harmony.”
He also applauded the decision of the Japanese Catholic Church to hold an annual day of prayer for interreligious dialogue, in which all parishes throughout the country discuss such dialogue and pray for it.
The cardinal was in Japan Aug. 2-10 and met Japanese Catholic bishops as well as leading representatives of the Shinto, Buddhist and Islamic faiths.
Reflecting on that visit he said he was struck by the fact that “religion is everywhere” in Japan.
He noted that the Japanese “were born into Shintoism” and “practice Buddhism” and because of this, “there is a kind of religious amalgamation and this gives one the impression that religion is a part of the social fabric.”
He said “What struck me is that the Japanese in their religion do not look for an absolute truth but (they seek) rather a sort of pacification with regard to the trials of life.”
During his trip, the French-born cardinal also participated in religious services at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the Americans dropped atomic bombs for the first time in 1945.
“It is beyond words to see what man is capable of doing!” he said. However, he also stressed the importance of remembering what happened here, so as “to avoid” similar happenings in the future.
He was greatly impressed too, he said, by the Japanese martyrs of the 16th and 17th centuries and the sufferings they endured. “Beyond doubt,” he said, this is a Church whose roots are to be found in the blood of the martyrs.
Japan’s Catholic Church has 1 million members but half of them are foreigners.
The cardinal said he reminded Japan’s Catholics that they have “a weighty inheritance that must bear fruit” and urged them to pray “that it bears good fruit.”
Cardinal Tauran also pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI has made dialogue between the Catholic Church and other religions in Asia “one of the priorities of his pontificate.”
“Interreligious dialogue is above all a pilgrimage toward truth,” he said.
Sources in Rome told UCA News that as the Vatican’s representative for dialogue with the other religions, Cardinal Tauran is giving greater attention to Asia and its religions this year.
He traveled in June to India for meetings with some of the country’s top Hindu religious leaders as well as leaders of other religions.
In July, he traveled to Kazakhstan and participated in a workshop on “Moral and Spiritual Values, World Ethics,” at the Third Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. He also has plans to visit other Asian countries later this year.
Sources say the Holy Father is considering making his first visit as pope to Asia in the next 18 months.
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