As Nato leaders met in Wales yesterday to discuss how the international community should respond to religiously motivated violence in the Middle East, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli President, visited Pope Francis in the Vatican to propose a “United Nations of Religions” to counter the rise of religious extremism.
“In the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationhood. Today, though, wars are launched using above all religion as an excuse,” Mr Peres told the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), before explaining his proposal at a meeting with the Pope.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who joined Palestinian President Abu Mazen and Pope Francis to pray for peace in the Vatican a month before the outbreak of war in Gaza, said the real United Nations was no longer up to the challenge, since it lacked the armies possessed by states and the conviction produced by religion.
“Today we face hundreds, perhaps thousands of terrorist movements that claim to kill in the name of God,” Mr Peres told the Italian magazine. “It’s a war that is entirely new compared to those of the past, both in its techniques and in its motivations.”
Mr Peres cited the example of UN peacekeepers from the Fiji Islands and the Philippines who had been taken hostage by terrorists. “What can the UN Secretary General do? Make a fine declaration. Which doesn’t have either the force or the efficacy of a homily by the Pope, who gathers half a million people in St Peter’s Square alone.”
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Mr Peres said a “United Religions Charter” should be drawn up that made it clear in the name of all faiths “that cutting people’s throats, or committing mass killings, as we have seen in these weeks, has nothing to do with religion”.
Mr Peres suggested the Pope might be the first leader of the new body, given that his moral authority was widely respected.
The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said Francis had listened to the proposal with interest but had made no personal commitments, pointing out that the Vatican already had departments responsible for inter-faith dialogue and for justice and peace.
Pope Francis discussed the topic in a separate meeting with Prince El Hassan bin Talal, the uncle of King Abdallah of Jordan.