Meeting with Pope Francis: promoting interreligious cooperation and uplifting human minds
Venerable Chang Hwa (常華法師), Director of DDM Chan Medication Center in New York, and Venerable Guo Jiann (果見法師), Director of DDM Los Angeles Center together with other Catholic and Buddhist representatives from Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, visited Pope Francis in Vatican on Sept 12, 2018, hoping to receive Pope’s recognition and support on the projects that have been planned and promoted ever since the last dialogue in June, 2015.
Looking back to the interreligious dialogue in 2015, entitled as Suffering, Liberation, and Fraternity, Pope invited the Catholic and Buddhist representatives from five cities in US to a meeting. During such dialogue, he proposed that Catholics should work hand-in-hand with Buddhists to lessen human sufferings. The “Green Affordable Housing” program was proposed as a workable plan.
After 3 years’ hard work since the 2015 dialogue, thanks to his Eminence, Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran’s continuous support and encouragement, along with Professor Donald W. Mitchell in his roundabout endeavors on advocating the program, it was finally making progress. Yet unfortunately, Cardinal Tauran passed away in early July this year.
(Photos were taken on 2018/9/12 by the photographer from the Vatican) When the interreligious delegation members met with the Pope, the first thing that Pope did was to take out a photo of Cardinal Tauran from his pocket, expressing the sentiment that Cardinal Tauran will always live in his heart. He sincerely hoped that the project could continue to receive financial support and endorsement from all parties, so Cardinal Tauran’s aspiration of interreligious cooperation can be fulfilled and interreligious cooperation can have a concrete start and potential for long-term development.
Speaking of the current status of the project, the Catholic team proposed a corresponding program for each city of Los Angles, Chicago, and New York. Each of them includes consideration of environmental engineering and spiritual uplifting function where the elderly, low-income families and the homeless could have their religious practices. Buddhist representatives in this project will provide their spiritual services such as sitting and walking meditation, Ta-Chi, Yoga, tea meditation, and art meditation etc.
In terms of Buddhists teams, Tzu-chi Foundation (慈濟基金會) from Taiwan will be in charge of the program in Los Angeles; Japan Buddhists representatives and DDM will set about the program in Chicago; and DDM will manage the New York program. It is hoped that all Buddhist traditions could partake in this program and together with Catholics, make efforts to uplift the human minds.
This visit and meeting with Pope went really well and concluded successfully; Venerable Chang Hwa would like to give her special thanks to Li, Shi-Ming (李世明), Taiwan Ambassador at Vatican, for his hospitality and warmheartedly reception that led the representatives to a deeper understanding of Vatican local cultural features.
Text: Venerable Chang-Hua (常華法師)/ Venerable Guo Jiann (果見法師)
Photos: DDM Chan Meditation Center in New York
Translation: Elenda Huang(頤嵐達)
Editing: DDM Editorial Team, Shi, Min (史敏)