50th anniversary of a landmark document from the Second Vatican Council on interfaith relations.

“Indifference and opposition have changed into collaboration and benevolence,” Pope Francis said. “From enemies and strangers, we’ve become friends and brothers.”
Posted by Crux: Covering all things Catholic on Wednesday, 28 October 2015

By Inés San Martín

Vatican correspondent October 28, 2015

ROME — Pope Francis on Wednesday called on the world’s religions to join forces in the fight against fundamentalism and extremism, arguing instead for a focus on “positive values” such as the promotion of peace, care for the poor, and environmental protection.

The pontiff was speaking to a delegation of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists on hand for an event marking the 50th anniversary of a landmark document from the Second Vatican Council on interfaith relations.

“An attitude of suspicion or condemnation of religion has spread due to violence and terrorism,” Pope Francis told the religious leaders.

Given that, he said, it’s necessary to focus on the positive values that religions espouse.

“The world looks at us believers, exhorting us to cooperate with each other and with men and women of good will who don’t profess any religion,” he said, “asking us to provide an answer on many issues.”

Francis’ appeal came during his weekly audience as he celebrated the anniversary of Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), a 1,600-word declaration from Vatican II that represented a turning point in relations between the Catholic Church and other religions, particularly Judaism.
For more please go here 

THE ENCYCLICAL OF POPE FRANCIS - PRAISE BE TO YOU - ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME

The latest papal encyclical was released to-day, 19 June 2015 AEST - 18 June in The Vatican.  The encyclical will take time to read closely and carefully, to digest it, and comment thoughtfully upon it.

Advocacy is indebted to Crux in providing the encyclical in a number of formats to make it easily accessible to people.  Advocacy has embedded the encyclical in this post where it can be read on-line or downloaded.  However, it is also available on Crux here in linked chapter by chapter outline for easy access and reading. Linked here is the encyclical as it was posted on The Vatican website.  Crux also contains recent commentary.

Comment

ABC - Australia: Key excerpts from the Pope's encyclical on the environment

The Age - Neil Ormerod: Pope Francis's views on global warming cold comfort for Canberra

The Guardian: The pope's encyclical on climate change - as it happened

The Washington Post: Ten key excerpts 

The Sydney Morning Herald:  

Papal environment encyclical a win for the Greens, challenge for Abbott

Pope Francis does Interfaith

Post by Crux: Covering all things Catholic.

Pope Francis says "World economic system is 'madness; "

The article below is republished from Australia's ABC News website.

Comment from The Editor of Beside The Creek:  And so say all of us???

World economic system is 'madness', 

puts money ahead of people, Pope Francis says

Updated Sat 14 Jun 2014, 1:36pm AEST

PHOTO: Pope Francis says the global economy puts money ahead of people and discards the young and old.(Reuters: Jack Guez, file photo)

RELATED STORY: Pope says Israeli, Palestinian presidents 'must respond' to yearning for peace

RELATED STORY: Pope in Bethlehem urges end to Middle East conflict

MAP: Holy See (Vatican City State)

Pope Francis has launched a sweeping attack on the world's economic system, saying it discards the young, puts money ahead of people and survives on the profits of war.

The 77-year-old leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said some countries had a youth unemployment rate of more than 50 per cent, with many millions in Europe seeking work in vain.

"It's madness," the Pope said in an interview with the Barcelona-based Vanguardia daily's Vatican correspondent Henrique Cymerman.

"We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done," he said.

"But since we cannot wage the third world war, we make regional wars.

"And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies - the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money - are obviously cleaned up."

Pope Francis says there is enough food to feed all the world's hungry.

The rich and the rest

French academic and economist Thomas Piketty talks to the ABC's PM about the world's growing inequality.

"When you see photographs of malnourished children you put your head in your hands, you cannot understand it," he said.

"I think we are in a global economic system that is not good."

The Pope says the people's needs should be at the heart of the economic system.

"But we have placed money in the centre, the god of money. We have fallen into the sin of idolatry, the idolatry of money. The economy moves by the desire to have more and paradoxically it feeds a disposable culture," he said.

The pontiff said the young were discarded when "the birth rate is limited" and the old were discarded when they no longer were considered productive.

"By discarding children and the old, we discard the future of a people because the young will pull us strongly forward and the old will give us wisdom," he said.

AFP

The doings of Pope Francis - a papal diary : Links to read Evangelii Gaudium - an apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis

Now, I know the foremost thought in your mind when you get up to-day 

is not "What is Pope Francis doing to-day?" ... 

but just in case you ARE wondering 

there is a site which will tell you what the pope is up to:

http://www.news.va/en/source/vatican-va

And by the way
if you wish to read the Apostolic Exhortation

Evangelii Gaudium

please go here to read about it
and obtain links to the downloadable pdf file 
or the link to read it on line.

Barney Zwartz , the Religion Editor of The Age in Melbourne reports.

The pope, the atheist - and an increasingly selfish world

The atheist meets the pope!

My good friend Margaret Lay - who is also a member of the Ballarat Interfaith Network - has sent me this article. It is worth reading.  It is a bit question and answer-ish in style but what lies between - at the heart of this unusual conversation - is a wise commentary on modern society.  Where is the this world at?  Where is this world going? What are or should be its values?  What is worthwhile? What impedes the good that would be done or should be done to others?

Picture above from here

And you think that mystics have been important for the Church?"They have been fundamental. A religion without mystics is a philosophy."

And St. Francis?"He's great because he is everything. He is a man who wants to do things, wants to build, he founded an order and its rules, he is an itinerant and a missionary, a poet and a prophet, he is mystical. He found evil in himself and rooted it out. He loved nature, animals, the blade of grass on the lawn and the birds flying in the sky. But above all he loved people, children, old people, women. He is the most shining example of that agape we talked about earlier."

Jesus, as you pointed out, said: 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Do you think that this has happened?"Unfortunately, no. Selfishness has increased and love towards others declined."

We embrace. We climb the short staircase to the door. 

I tell the Pope there is no need to accompany me 

but he waves that aside with a gesture. 

"We will also discuss the role of women in the Church. 

Remember that the Church (la chiesa) is feminine."