CNA Newsroom, Nov 3, 2022 / 08:00 am
Amid ongoing concern for Christians in the Middle East, an Iraqi archbishop on Wednesday called for an end to sectarian violence and for dialogue toward “a place where the culture of faith is always and everywhere understood to be a universal blessing, because it is a culture of life.”
Addressing the Group of Twenty’s first-ever forum on religion on Nov. 2, Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Erbil drew on his personal experience, the suffering of Iraqi Christians, and the history of his homeland to drive home the need for “forgiveness and a renunciation of violence.”
The G20 — a group of the world’s major economies — introduced the religious summit ahead of its own conference this year, which takes place on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Warda noted that the “R20” Religion Forum, from Nov. 2–3, is organized by Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim movement.