VATICAN - “Our role is to intensify dialogue among religions as well as with political and civil authorities, each of us must be aware of his or her role and responsibility”. Vatican delegation at World Summit of Representatives of Great Religions promoted by the Patriarch of Moscow

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Representatives of the world’s Religions are meeting in Moscow 3-5 July at the invitation of the Patriarch of Moscow Alexis II. The Patriarch invited Religious leaders from 44 different countries, including Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shinto, various Christian denominations and a Holy See Delegation of eight members led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, and including four other Cardinals Paul Poupard, Roger Etchegaray, Godfried Danneels and Edgar McCarrick.
The purpose of the Summit is to encourage an exchange of opinions on the role of religion in society today, and discuss questions such as dialogue and collaboration among civilisations, human rights, moral responsibility, protection of the family and human life, respect for religious sentiments, the role of the media, responsibility for creation.
In his intervention Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Councils for Culture and Inter-religious Dialogue said that in general, trust between believers in different faiths is increasing.
“As religious leaders, said Cardinal Paul Poupard, we are today very concerned about the orientations of political systems primarily focused on economic power to the detriment of justice and solidarity, and about the crisis of values sweeping across entire swathes of the world's population, notably the young, posing serious questions for the future of humanity.. “The globalisation of cultural models empty of humanising values favours the loss of identity of entire sections of our societies, as they drown in the artificial uniformity of an economic model with universal pretensions... For the European Continent, Christianity has been a primordial factor of unity between peoples and their cultures. For two Millennia, it has continuously promoted an integral vision man and his rights and duties, and the history of a great number of nations witnesses to its extraordinary cultural fecundity... For its part, the Catholic Church is resolutely engaged in intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, aware of the irreplaceable role of religions in the humanisation of society, of their capacity to work at its heart as authentic leaven able to enrich the exchanges between people and their culture on the highest values without which man would become a wolf for man”.
The Cardinal said he would conclude his address quoting “His Eminence Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad: .”
The Summit is due to issue a message addressed to G8 nations heads of state, political leaders, public opinion and all members of the different religious communities.(AP) (4/7/2006 Agenzia Fides;