Many faiths preach one message

Clerics from different faiths gather to recall Pope John Paul II's visit to a synagogue

By ALEXANDRA ALTER

aalter@MiamiHerald.com

A Muslim imam, the archbishop of Miami, a rabbi and a Protestant minister met at a Miami Beach synagogue Wednesday night to talk about a religious figure who inspired them all: Pope John Paul II.

They were among the nearly 500 clergy and lay people who gathered at Temple Emanu-El to celebrate Pope John Paul II's historic visit to a Rome synagogue more than 20 years ago, when he became the first Roman Catholic pontiff to visit a Jewish temple.

''His visit represents a model for recognizing the holiness in the other,'' Rabbi Fred Klein, director of Community Chaplaincy for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, said in an interview. ``I can have a truth claim without having that claim negate someone else's truth claim.''

Klein joined Miami Archbishop John Favalora, Imam Nasir Ahmad of Masjid Al-Ansar and the Rev. Priscilla Felisky Whitehead, a United Church of Christ minister, for a panel discussion on how the pope's gesture has shaped interfaith relations.

''It's by doing that we really accomplish what he was trying to teach us, to tell us,'' said Favalora, in urging the crowd to act on the pope's teachings.

The dialogue is part of an ongoing interfaith pilot project to improve Catholic-Jewish relations. The program has gained support from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, the Archdiocese of Miami and the Miami Coalition of Christians and Jews, said Jim Howe, executive director of the Miami Coalition of Christians and Jews.

Eventually, religious and community leaders hope to get churches and synagogues to celebrate April 13, the day the pope visited a synagogue in Rome in 1986, as an interfaith holiday.

The crowd honored the late pope with a moment of silence, which was broken by the sound of the shofar, the ram's horn that is sounded on Jewish holidays. An interfaith invocation of Catholic prayers and a recitation of a chapter of the Koran in classical Arabic followed.

Congregants were asked to imagine they were sitting in the synagogue in Rome listening to Pope John Paul II, except in this case the part of the pope was played by Samuel Baum -- a college student wearing jeans and a stylish striped blazer -- who read a portion of the pope's 1986 speech.

After the invocations, the clergy panel spoke about how Pope John Paul's interfaith gesture has resonated among Christians, Muslims and Jews in the two decades since his visit.

Imam Ahmad, who said he was raised Christian, offered a Koranic verse: ``God made us into tribes and into nations not that we would despise one another, but that we would know and benefit from one another.''