JAKARTA, Indonesia (LifeSiteNews) — Signing a joint declaration with Indonesia’s Muslim Grand Imam, Pope Francis urged inter-religious “unity and harmony,” while warning about “dehumanization and climate change.”

Beginning his last full day in Indonesia as part of his Asian voyage, Pope Francis joined Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar for what has been billed as the pinnacle of his stay in the country – the interreligious meeting at Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque and the joint signing of a document with Imam Umar.

The declaration called for joint action between religious leaders to address “two serious crises: dehumanization and climate change.”

From tunnel to the tent

The 87-year-old Pontiff first visited the famous “Tunnel of Friendship,” which links the mosque with the Catholic cathedral of Our Lady of Assumption. This tunnel, sponsored by the government, has assumed a key role in shining a light on the relations between Muslims and Catholics in the country.

Indonesia is 87 percent Muslim and 3 percent Catholic, but has until recent times largely seen peaceful relations between the two, and the concept of co-existence and harmony is very prominent in society.

READ: Pope Francis skips Sign of the Cross to impart blessing ‘valid for all religions’

Francis congratulated all present for maintaining the tunnel as “a place of dialogue and encounter,” adding how “different religious traditions have a role to play in helping everyone pass through the tunnels of life with our eyes turned towards the light.”

His chief address came minutes later when sat alongside Umar in a tent adjoining the mosque. After listening to passages sung from the Koran and read from the Gospel, Umar welcomed the Pope warmly.

Emphasizing the mosque as an Islamic place of worship but also “a great home for humanity,” Umar said that “anyone is welcome to seek the good of humanity through this Mosque.”

‘Look deeply’ and ‘preserve the bonds’

Themes of religious tolerance, harmony, and peaceful co-existence have already dominated the Pope’s days in Indonesia, during which he has met with political and religious leaders at a number of appointments, both public and private.

Francis continued these themes during his own address to the assembled religious leaders and Imam Umar.

Quoting from Evangelii Gaudium, he said that the tunnel connecting the two buildings enables a “finding and sharing a ‘mystique’ of living together, mingling and encounter.”

I encourage you to continue along this path so that all of us, together, each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God and contribute to building open societies, founded on reciprocal respect and mutual love, capable of protecting against rigidity, fundamentalism and extremism, which are always dangerous and never justifiable.

Using the tunnel as a platform to highlight the religious links he wished to re-emphasize, Francis recommended that Muslims and Catholics “look deeply” within themselves in order to “preserve the bonds between you.”

He commented that the respective buildings gave places for worship, but that in the tunnel Muslims and Catholics could meet and exchange ideas: “There are spaces in both the Mosque and the Cathedral that are well defined and frequented by their respective faithful, but below ground in the tunnel, those same people can meet and encounter each other’s religious perspectives.”

The uniting common theme, said Francis, is “the one root common to all religious sensitivities: the quest for an encounter with the divine, the thirst for the infinite that the Almighty has placed in our hearts, the search for a greater joy and a life stronger than any type of death, which animates the journey of our lives and impels us to step out of ourselves to encounter God.”

He also urged a continuation of building relationships between creeds. Francis first stated that inter-religious dialogue was not just “seeking common ground … no matter the cost,” since that “may end up dividing us, because the doctrines and dogmas of each religious experience are different.”

Instead, he urged “creating a connection in the midst of diversity, cultivating bonds of friendship, care and reciprocity.” By doing this, the Pope commented, people could learn “from the religious tradition of others,” and unite in the “pursuit of the same goals: defence of human dignity, the fight against poverty and the promotion of peace.”

JAKARTA: After signing the Joint Declaration in Indonesia’s Istiqlal Mosque, #PopeFrancis spoke on forming inter-religious links, esp betw Islam & Catholicism, urging a connection in the midst of diversity & to commit ourselves to seek the truth together, learning from the… pic.twitter.com/I0Tf5qRWoM

— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) September 5, 2024

“Unity is born from personal bonds of friendship as well as mutual respect and defence of the ideas of others and their sacred spaces,” Francis said.

Istiqlal Declaration

The culmination of the event was the join signing of the Joint Declaration of Istiqlal 2024, “Fostering Religious Harmony for the Sake of Humanity.”

While shorter than the controversial 2019 Abu Dhabi declaration on Human Fraternity, the Istiqlal text echoes its key elements.

The text spotlights “dehumanization and climate change,” beginning by stating that “religion is often instrumentalized” in fostering violence and war. As for climate change, the text attests that “human exploitation of creation, our common home, has contributed to climate change, leading to various destructive consequences such as natural disasters, global warming and unpredictable weather patterns. This ongoing environmental crisis has become an obstacle to the harmonious coexistence of peoples.”

Consequently, the Istiqlal Declaration calls on religious leaders to “cooperate in responding to the above mentioned crises.”

“Since there is a single global human family, interreligious dialogue ought to be recognized as an effective instrument for resolving local, regional and international conflicts, especially those incited by the abuse of religion,” the text adds.

By holding fast to the joint declaration, the Pope said that “we take on the responsibility to address the serious and sometimes dramatic crises that threaten the future of humanity such as wars and conflicts, which are unfortunately caused at times by the manipulation of religion, and the environmental crisis, which is an obstacle to the growth and coexistence of peoples.”

The maintaining of religious harmony in Indonesia is notable, given its Muslim domination of the population. Pope Francis has consistently made inter-religious dialogue a key element of his pontificate.

Both with his Abu Dhabi Document on Human Fraternity (2019) and encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti (2020), Pope Francis cemented a defining feature of his papal reign – namely, a form of “fraternity” and “unity” which appeared divorced from the Catholic faith. The Abu Dhabi text was also described as seeming to “overturn the doctrine of the Gospel” with its promotion of equality of religions in a form of “fraternity.” Similarly, Fratelli Tutti was condemned by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò as promoting a “blasphemous” form of brotherhood without God as well as “religious indifferentism.”

This theme of human fraternity appears to be renewed in the Istiqlal text, with Francis and Imam Umar collaborating in the joint effort of fraternity.

Indeed, a succinct analysis of Francis’ visit to Indonesia was provided by a translator on the Vatican News live-stream of the morning events:

Challenges will certainly always be there, on both sides there will always be people who do not bind to the concept of religious pluralism. Every society also has its conservatives and its radicals, but what we have here and what we have seen so far with this visit of Pope Francis is indeed a country that is trying to encourage religious pluralism, co-existence and harmony.