Pope urges interfaith dialogue

POPE Francis yesterday called for a “sincere dialogue” between Christians and Muslims as he met grieving relatives and survivors of France’s Bastille Day attack, in which a jihadist ploughed his truck into a crowd.

The pope, who this week denounced violence in the name of religion — declaring “there is no God of war” — met 180 people who were wounded or left traumatised or bereaved by the July 14 attack in Nice which claimed 86 lives.

“We need to start a sincere dialogue and have fraternal relations between everybody, especially those who believe in a sole God who is merciful,” he said, speaking in the Vatican’s giant Paul VI audience hall, and calling this “an urgent priority”.

“It is with a feeling of great emotion that I am meeting you, those who are suffering in body and in spirit because an evening of festivity turned into one of violence which struck blindly at all, without taking into account their origins or religion,” the pontiff said. “We can only respond to the devil’s attacks with God’s works which are forgiveness, love and respect for the other, even if they are different,” he said.

Members of 58 families were flown in from the French Rivera resort city of Nice.

French police on Tuesday arrested eight associates of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, who rammed a 19-ton truck through a crowd of more than 30 000 people on the seafront Promenade des Anglais before police shot him dead. A total of 434 people were injured in the attack.

Boubekeur Bekri, vicepresident of the Southeast France regional Muslim council, hailed the pope’s “intense humanism”, expressed through his visit to mainly Muslim refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Maurice Niddam, president of the Jewish community in Nice, did not accompany the Jewish victims of the attack to Rome, but he praised a pope “open to all faiths”. -— AFP