At 9.00 this morning, in the room next to the Paul VI  Hall, the Holy Father Francis received in audience the participants in the second meeting of the Permanent Committee for Dialogue established between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Iraqi Superintendencies (for Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Yazidis, Sabeans/Mandaeans).

The following is the greeting the Holy Father addressed to the participants:

Holy Father’s greeting

Good morning! I greet you warmly and thank you for your visit and your presence. For me this encounter of dialogue and fraternity is a true pleasure. We are all brothers, and where there is brotherhood there is peace. We are sons of God, all of us. And we, as His Eminence [Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran] said, we have a common father on earth: Abraham, and we come from Abraham, up to today, all together. We are brothers and, like brothers, we are all different and all the same, like that fingers on a hand: there are five fingers, they are all fingers, but they are all different.

I thank God, the Lord, Who helped us to gather here. Your dialogue among you, your visit, is a true wealth of brotherhood, and for this reason it is a road towards peace, for all. The peace of the heart, the peace of families, the peace of countries, the peace of the world.

I ask the Lord Almighty to bless you all, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. Many thanks.