All aboard the "Prayer Train" for Assisi. At 8.30 a.m. this morning, Pope John Paul II will officially initiate one of the most extraordinary pilgrimages of modern times when he and representatives of many different religions will climb aboard an intercity train in St Peter's Station, beside the Vatican, and head for a Day of Prayer For Peace in Assisi, spiritual home of St Francis.
African Animists, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Shintoists, Sikhs, Tenrikyoists and Zoroastrians (the order is alphabetic) will join the Pope and the representatives of 31 Christian Churches (including Anglicans, Protestants and Orthodox) to make a solemn declaration calling for peace in the world.
The Pope in November called for today's gathering, partly prompted by the implications for world peace of the September 11th attacks on the US.
Speaking on Sunday in St Peter's Square, the Pope explained the purpose of the meeting. "In the face of violence, which in these times rages in so many regions of the earth, they [the religious leaders] feel the need to show that religions are a factor of solidarity, discrediting and isolating all those who instrumentalise the name of God for purposes or with methods that in reality offend Him."
Today's meeting has two recent precedents: the Pope called a similar Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in both 1986 and 1993. It was partly the perceived success of that first Assisi meeting in October 1986 which prompted his call for today's rerun.
Although the participants will travel together on pilgrimage, they will not actually pray together today, a point again underlined by the Pope on Sunday. "The Day of Prayer for Peace in no way is an attempt to indulge in religious syncretism. In fact, all religious groups will pray in different places according to their own faith, their own language, their own tradition and in full respect of others. What will unite all the participants is the certainty that peace is a gift of God. As believers, each one knows he is called to be an agent of peace."
Strict security arrangements will be in place. Assisi will be cordoned off and 30 armed officers will travel on the papal train. The Pope is expected to sit in a mid-train carriage, accompanied by Curia cardinals and the Italian Minister of Transport, Mr Pietro Lunardi.
On his arrival at Assisi, the Pope will be greeted by the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi is to attend this afternoon's solemn peace declaration.
The Pope officially embraced the Internet on Tuesday, urging the Roman Catholic Church to navigate the Web with evangelising zeal "armed with the Gospel of Christ". "For the Church, the new world of cyberspace is a summons to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the Gospel message," said the Pope in a message released by the Vatican. "This challenge is at the heart of what it means at the beginning of the millennium to follow the Lord's command to 'put out into the deep'." - (AFP)