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Cardinal Koovakad: Fraternity is only possible architecture for sustainable future
Cardinal George Jakob Koovakad, Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, reflects on the “Spirit of Assisi” born 40 years ago with Pope St. John Paul II’s interreligious encounter in the Italian city, saying the Christian response to war, and the only path to peace, is “a humanity that prays, walks together, and disarms itself first.”
By Alessandro Di Bussolo
From the historic World Day of Prayer for Peace among religions held in Assisi on 27 October 1986 to Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, those who believe in peace continue to have “the confidence that fraternity is the only possible architecture for a sustainable future.”
Forty years apart, both events tell us that “the human person is greater than any power that seeks to reduce him.” Cardinal George Jakob Koovakad, Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, made this point in his address on “The Meeting of 27 October 1986 and the Magnifica Humanitas of Leo XIV,” delivered on 7 October, at the Pontifical University Antonianum.
The event was organised by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality as the first in a series of meetings entitled “The Spirit of Assisi: Between Memory and Prophecy.”
War is not an inevitable destiny
The Cardinal recalled that in 1986 the challenge was “not to allow the logic of blocs, or the ideological denial of the meaning of religion, to have the final word.”
Today, he said, “the challenge is not to allow the logic of force, amplified by algorithms, to convince us that war is an inevitable destiny.”
In both cases, Cardinal Koovakad explained, “the Christian response is the same: a humanity that prays, walks together, and disarms itself first.”
It is a humanity that bears witness to fraternity as the only possible path, because no other model can endure: “neither the balance of terror, nor the arms race, nor technological domination without responsibility.”
The Day of Prayer and the world in 1986
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue began his address by recalling what the world was like in 1986 and the reasons why St. John Paul II decided to convene the Day of Prayer and hold it in Assisi, the city of a man of peace, St. Francis.
The Poor Man of Assisi had a greeting that, Cardinal Koovakad said, “had been revealed to him”: “May the Lord give you peace.” For St. Francis, peace was neither a strategy nor an ideology, but “a gift that comes from above and is offered, with empty hands, to everyone we meet.”
Forty years ago, Europe was still divided by the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall would fall three years later. In 1986, which had been proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of Peace, someone suggested promoting an ecumenical gathering on the theme, and the person most suited to convene it seemed to be the Pope.
During the preparations, the meeting was opened to representatives of other religions, following the path opened by the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra aetate, which states that the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy” in other religions and invites people to regard with esteem and respect their ways of life and doctrines.
Announcement at St. Paul’s and the choice of Assisi
With his insight, Pope John Paul II resisted efforts, such as those of official atheism in Eastern Europe, to pursue peace “regardless of religious meaning.” Instead, he appealed to the religious dimension.
On 25 January, in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, he announced the convocation of the World Day of Prayer for Peace—the same place and the same day on which, in 1959, St. John XXIII had announced the Second Vatican Council.
Assisi, the city of St. Francis, was chosen because the saint is recognised as a brother by believers of every religious tradition. The Pope made clear that this would not be a diplomatic summit, but a pilgrimage, a fast and a prayer.
FILE PHOTO: Cardinal Koovakad
Together to pray, not to “pray together”
The approximately 160 religious leaders—Christians of every denomination: Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Shintoists, as well as representatives of the traditional religions of Africa and the Americas—first prayed separately within their respective communities.
They then travelled on pilgrimage to the Basilica of St. Francis. In the square, each tradition took its turn, “each tradition prayed according to its own way, while the others listened in silence.”
According to Cardinal Koovakad, they all “showed the world the language of the poor”, that of “feet, silence, hunger.”
There was no “mixing of rites or ambiguous common prayer.” In Assisi, people came together to pray, not to “pray together.” Because “praying alongside one another does not mean erasing differences: it means recognizing, each from the roots of his or her own faith, that peace is a gift that we do not possess and that we must ask for.”
As the Prefect recalled, this is the logic summarised in the recent Note, A Journey of Hope: Sixty Years of Interreligious Dialogue and Fraternity in the Light of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra aetate: “maximum identity and maximum dialogue.”
Journey of the “Spirit of Assisi”
Cardinal Koovakad stressed that the “Spirit of Assisi”—an expression used that very evening by Pope John Paul II as he greeted the religious leaders—has developed over the years in Italy and beyond. Every year, the Tendai Buddhists renew it at the Religious Summit on Mount Hiei.
Above all, however, the spirit has been revived through meetings convened in subsequent years by various Popes: St. John Paul II in 2002, following the attacks of 11 September 2001; Benedict XVI in 2006 and 2011, when he also invited non-believers; and Francis in 2016.
After signing the Document on Human Fraternity with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Abu Dhabi in 2019, Pope Francis further developed this vision in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, which he chose to sign in Assisi at the tomb of St. Francis. In doing so, he “made the Spirit of Assisi a social doctrine of fraternity.”
Pope Leo XIV’s first steps
At the Colosseum in Rome on 28 October 2025, at the conclusion of the “Dare to Build Peace” meeting, Pope Leo XIV said that “those who do not pray abuse religion, even to the point of killing.”
He added that a culture of reconciliation would overcome the current “globalisation of powerlessness”—that widespread feeling that seems to tell us that another history is impossible.
Pope Leo at the Colosseum for the International Meeting for Peace in 2025 (VATICAN MEDIA)
On the same day, marking the 60th anniversary of Nostra aetate, Pope Leo invited believers to be prophets of our time: voices that denounce violence and injustice, heal divisions and proclaim peace for all.
In the Joint Declaration with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul, he reaffirmed the rejection of any use of religion or the name of God to justify violence.
Magnifica Humanitas: a text about the human person
It is within this continuity, Cardinal Koovakad said, that Magnifica Humanitas should be read. It is not an “encyclical on AI,” but first and foremost “a text about the human person.”
In paragraph 190, the Pope denounces the return today of a “worrying rehabilitation of war as an instrument of international policy.” In paragraph 194, he notes that arsenals are once again at the centre of international affairs and that nuclear deterrence is being presented as an indispensable condition of security.
For this reason, the Cardinal commented, “forty years later, Assisi is not a memory: it is an urgency.”
No room for sacralised hatred
Thus, in paragraph 223, Pope Leo incorporates 27 October 1986 into the Church’s Magisterium as “a criterion with which to read the present,” Cardinal Koovakad said.
The encyclical explains that the “Spirit of Assisi” “shows that believers can once again draw from the most authentic sources of their traditions, where there is no room for sacralised hatred.”
“Those who use the name of God to legitimise terrorism, violence or war,” the text continues, betray his face.
For this reason, in paragraph 228, the Pope writes: “Let us never tire of praying for peace and working to bring it about.” Prayer and commitment, therefore, the cardinal observed, are “not alternatives, but intertwined.”
Each in their own language, all together for peace
In the encyclical’s opening contrast between Babel—the idolatry of profit—and the “way of Nehemiah,” which transforms diversity into a resource, Assisi 1986 represents, for the Cardinal, the second path.
It is not a universal religion, nor a single language. The Note A Journey of Hope expressly excludes the idea that dialogue seeks to “establish a great world religion in which all beliefs are flattened into one.”
Each in their own language, “all together for peace.” Cardinal Koovakad noted that this is the logic of Pentecost, which Pope Leo recalled at UNESCO on 25 September 2026, contrasting it with the Tower of Babel—a unity imposed through domination and destined to collapse.
Encyclical and artificial intelligence
Magnifica Humanitas, according to the Prefect, explores a frontier that did not exist in 1986: artificial intelligence.
Promulgation of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (VATICAN MEDIA)
In paragraph 198, Pope Leo stresses that “no algorithm exists that can make war morally acceptable.”
AI does not remove conflict “from its intrinsic inhumanity: it can only make it faster and more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence and accustoming us to the idea that violence is inevitable and merely needs to be optimized.”
27 October: To Assisi with Pope Leo
In his concluding remarks, Cardinal Koovakad recalled that on 27 October, “we will return in memory and in heart,” and physically as well, accompanying Pope Leo XIV as a pilgrim to Assisi, returning to that day in 1986.
“Remembering is not enough. The Note of the three Dicasteries is entitled A Journey of Hope, and Christian hope is not naïve optimism: it is perseverance in the conviction that good is always possible and that no war has the final word.”
A Franciscan university such as the Antonianum has a particular responsibility to make this its school of learning: “to study peace, teach it, practise it, forming people capable of a strong identity and courageous openness to others, because young people are the first to observe whether our actions follow our words.”
Next meeting on 26 November
The meetings entitled “The Spirit of Assisi: Between Memory and Prophecy,” organised as part of the Chair of Spirituality and Interreligious Dialogue dedicated to Archbishop Luigi Padovese, will continue on 26 November 2026.
Sandra Migliore, professor at the University of Turin, will speak on the theme “St Francis and Peace: Between History and Memory.”
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