THE Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, has told an ecumenical conference that the Bible is "the divine gift for the reconciliation of people" in divided Christian societies like Northern Ireland.
Cardinal Martini, one of the Catholic Church's leading biblical scholars, was speaking at the Green hills ecumenical conference in Drogheda, Co Louth, to an audience which included leaders of the country's main churches, among them Cardinal Daly, the Presbyterian moderator, Dr John Ross, and the Methodist president, the Rev Christopher Walpole.
He outlined how his pastoral programme of "spiritual reading" had brought thousands of adults, young people and non believers together in churches, cathedrals, and even stadiums in Milan to hear how their lives could be inspired by reading, meditating and learning to pray from the Bible.
He said that 16 years ago when he was appointed Archbishop of Milan the world's largest diocese with five million baptised Catholics he had felt full of fear like Jonah in front of Nineveh "weak, poor, naked and blind" before the "anonymity and indifference to religion of a large secular city"
He had wondered if by helping them to understand the Bible, a seed could be sown in people to help them "come out of that indifference and loneliness to a knowledge of Jesus Christ".
He had started with a group of SO young people teaching them "how to pray from Scripture". When the group reconvened the following autumn there were nearly 400 of them. Eventually up to 5,000 people were coming to monthly meetings at Milan Cathedral.
Cardinal Martini said he also tried to bring in non believing adults. He had asked prominent speakers who were non believers to explain their spiritual experiences. Several spoke on the subject "Do non believers pray?".
A Japanese Buddhist monk explained how he prayed to his ideal of nothingness. The cardinal invited Jews to testify to the "silence of God" in the face of the Holocaust. He invited the mayors of Rome, Milan and Venice to speak about whether the "great city" was killing faith.
Cardinal Martini concluded by saying he was still, like Jonah, "afraid of the great modern city, like the Israelites were afraid of the giant Goliath". But he wondered whether the spiritual reading of the Bible could become like one of the five stones David took from the river which could be used to fight against the "giant indifference of that great city".