The Pope and the Buddhist

A view from the Vatican

By Cardinal Paul Poupard

The dialogue with cultures and with all religious traditions is a fundamental internal requirement of Christianity. In the Christian vision, all human beings were created by God in his image and likeness and in Jesus, the Son incarnate, all are called to enter in perfect communion with God and among themselves. No one is excluded. To go to meet the other who is different from you in the spirit of love and with a genuine interest is what the Christian faith proposes and requires.

On September 14,1965, at the opening of the final session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI exhorted the Council fathers saying, “The love that animates our communion does not set us apart from other men and women … it gives us a universal dimension; our truth leads us to charity. Remember the exhortation of the Apostle: ‘Living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into … Christ from whom the whole body … builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:15-16). While other currents of thought and action proclaim quite different principles for building human society [such as] power, wealth, science, class struggle, vested interests or other things, the Church proclaims love. The Council is a solemn act of love for humanity.”

Nikkyo Niwano [founder of the Buddhist lay movement Rissho Kosei-kai] was present in St. Peter’s Basilica on that day. Recalling that moment, he wrote in his autobiography that the Pope “felt the responsibility, as the representative of God on earth, to communicate the love of God equally to all men and women and to all religious faiths.”

The following day he was able to greet the Pope personally and that meeting, as Cinto Busquet describes in detail in his book, was decisive for the interreligious commitment of Nikkyo Niwano who wrote: “I’ll never forget the warm hands of Pope Paul VI. I think that our handshake gave a new impulse to cooperation, friendship and mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism. Nothing could have given me greater joy than the feeling of full agreement about the necessity of interreligious cooperation. It strengthened my determination to be a bridge between the two religions, and equally extend this bridge towards other religions also.”

As the Council declaration Nostra Aetate affirms, “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions” and “considers with sincere respect those ways of acting and of life … those precepts and teachings that, though differing in many ways from its own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that Truth that enlightens all men and women.”

In the universal Truth that illuminates everyone, in the common Truth that embraces everyone, it is therefore possible to meet each other. The exemplary relationship of Nikkyo Niwano and Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement, two great charismatic figures of our time, powerfully illustrates how the authentic religious experience, whatever the religious tradition it originates from and is sustained by, if it is genuine and radical, cannot but be a source of unity and harmony, of common commitment and mutual encouragement for the good of humanity. They give a shining example of how complete faithfulness to one’s own religious convictions is not in contrast with recognizing the other’s beliefs, but rather becomes the foundation that engenders it.

Cardinal Paul Poupard is the former president of the Pontifical Council for Culture and Interreligious Dialogue.

Excerpts from a December 2009 presentation at the launch of the book Incontrarsi nell’Amore: Una lettura cristiana di Nikkyo Niwano (Meeting Together in Love:
A Christian reading of Nikkyo Niwano) by Cinto Busquet (Citta Nuova).

Read related articles in Living City at: Articles by topic

Share on Facebook. Click here!