Pope Leo XIV will not be in Assisi next Tuesday, October 27, for the final day of the interreligious meeting “Unarmed and Disarming Peace,” with which the Community of Sant’Egidio commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the prayer for peace convened by Saint John Paul II in 1986. The Holy See Press Office announced this on Friday. It explains that the Pontiff underwent a follow-up X-ray that confirmed his excellent recovery after the October 13 surgery at the Gemelli Polyclinic, during which the lower lobe of his right lung was removed. Given the short time since the operation, doctors have advised against, as a precaution, the helicopter flight planned to reach the city of Saint Francis.
The explanation leaves a question hanging. Assisi is about 180 kilometers from Rome, a little more than two and a half hours by car on the highway, a journey the Pope could have made by road if the only issue was the helicopter. The statement limits itself to advising against the flight and does not clarify why travel by car was not considered, an alternative that would have allowed Leo XIV to personally close an event the Vatican had presented as one of the major highlights of his autumn agenda.
The definitive tests, released on Wednesday, confirmed a localized pulmonary adenocarcinoma, and the oncology assessment concluded that no additional treatment is necessary. The Pope has already resumed his audiences at the Vatican. Instead of attending Assisi, he will send a message to the organizers, to representatives of Christian confessions and other religions, and to the guests, in which he will present dialogue and the search for gestures of peace as valuable resources in a time of conflicts.
An encounter with open questions
The event, held from October 25 to 27, brings together 384 representatives from 53 countries, with 24 forums and a closing ceremony in front of the Basilica of Saint Francis. Since 1986, the so-called spirit of Assisi has carried an unresolved question: how to promote interreligious encounter without giving the impression that all religions are equivalent paths, and how to distinguish cooperation for peace from a common prayer that blurs faith in Christ as the sole Savior. Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, did not hide his reservations about that first meeting, and wanted each confession to pray separately in the 2011 edition, when he was already Pope.
This year, that old doctrinal question is joined by a more concrete one. Sant’Egidio has not published the list of Muslim delegations. Its register of speakers from previous editions includes names very close to Saudi power, beginning with Sheikh Mohammad al-Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League, an organization based in Mecca and funded by the Saudi state, who was Minister of Justice of the kingdom. The organization has not clarified whether any of them will be in Assisi.
The silence on Mecca
On October 14, Saudi Arabia executed in the Mecca region two Bangladeshi cleaners, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sweety Akter, sentenced to death for an “immoral act” in a mosque that the authorities have never described. They were tried behind closed doors and their own government learned of the execution through the official Saudi agency. Sweety was the mother of a four-year-old girl.
A few days earlier, Cardinal Pietro Parolin had described as incomprehensible the announced execution in the United States of the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre and had announced a formal declaration by the Holy See. Pope Leo XIV himself recalled on the World Day Against the Death Penalty that capital punishment violates the inviolability and dignity of the person. Regarding the two workers executed in Mecca, neither the Secretariat of State nor the Press Office has said a word.
The Pope will not be in Assisi to personally deliver his call for an unarmed and disarming peace. His message will arrive, and with it the opportunity to see whether the defense of human dignity that the Church proclaims before Washington also extends to two poor immigrants executed in the holy city of Islam, at a meeting where dialogue with the Muslim world occupies a central place.