Pope and Dalai Lama discuss Unification on “religious matters”
Pastor Dale Morgan
14 October, 2006
VATICAN
*
Pope and Dalai Lama discuss Unification on “religious matters”*
Vatican City (AsiaNewsWires) – The meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and
the Dalai Lama was religious in nature. During the talks, the head of
the Tibetan Buddhist community told the press afterwards, “we talked
about human values, religious harmony, unification and the environment”.
On such issues the two leaders see eye to eye.
As far as tensions between religions, the Dalai Lama said that a “few
people who act badly are not representative of the religion to which
they belong.”
To a question about human rights in China and Tibet the Dalai Lama said
that many foreign delegations on visit to Beijing have raised the issue.
“They must continue to do so,” he added, “irrespective of the answers
they get.”
As for the Panchen Lama, the second highest leader in Tibetan Buddhism,
the Dalai Lama said he “had no news about him,” adding that “the Panchen
is the youngest prisoner of conscience (he is currently 16-year-old) in
the world and when we ask for news about him they say he is where he is.”
The Tibetan leader said that, when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the
papacy in April of last year and became Benedict XVI, he hoped to meet
him. In his congratulatory message, he said he was looking forward to
continuing the dialogue of religious unification he had begun with John
Paul II, waiting “for the honour and the pleasure to meet his Holiness
[the new Pope] in the near future in a trip to Europe.”
In that statement, he also said :“In my attempts to interact (with other
religions) in the last 30 years, we Tibetan Buddhists have developed a
special and close affinity with Christianity in general, and Catholics
in particular”.
He said that he admired John Paul II’s efforts to develop better
understanding and contemplation of the merging of all the World's
faiths and remembered his nine meetings with the Pontiff between 1980
and 2003, including the one in India in 1986 and ‘World Prayer for Peace
Day’ held in Assisi the same year.
The first talks between the Tibetan Buddhist leader and Benedict XVI
received the same low-key media coverage as the last one with John Paul
III. Not only no journalists were admitted, but it was neither announced
beforehand, nor recorded in the Vatican’s official news releases. The
Vatican Press Office did however confirm that it had taken place as it
did the last time the Dalai Lama met a Roman Pontiff.
“It was a short courtesy call whose content was exclusively religious,”
said on November 27, 2003, then Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls.
“A private meeting, a courtesy call, with a religious content,” said
today Fr Ciro Benedettini, deputy director of the Vatican Press Office.
A low-key affair that shows how concerned the Vatican is about
complicating relations with China, whose regime systematically reacts
with extreme aggressiveness to any government or public figure who meets
the man Tibetans still consider their leader.