Pope Francis, during his visit to Southeast Asia’s largest mosque in Jakarta on Thursday, urged Muslims and Catholics to join forces in pushing global leaders to tackle the twin threats of climate change and extremism.
He emphasized the shared roots of different religious beliefs during his visit to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
As part of a day rich with religious symbolism, the pope and local faith leaders, including Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar, signed a joint declaration calling for urgent action to combat climate change. The declaration emphasized the human responsibility for environmental degradation, linking it to natural disasters, global warming, and erratic weather patterns.
“The exploitation of creation, our common home, has led to climate change and its destructive consequences,” the declaration read. It called on “all people of good will” to take decisive steps to preserve the planet’s natural environment and resources.
This declaration was signed during the pope’s visit to Istiqlal Mosque, a massive domed structure spanning nine hectares (22 acres) in central Jakarta. The pope is in Indonesia until Friday as part of a 12-day tour of four Southeast Asian and Oceanic nations.
Addressing an interfaith gathering outside the mosque’s main entrance, which began with a young woman reciting a passage from the Quran, Pope Francis highlighted a new underground tunnel connecting the mosque to the nearby Catholic cathedral. The 28-meter (90-foot) “tunnel of friendship,” he said, symbolizes the shared roots of different religions and reflects how people of different faiths can unite in their journey toward the divine.
“We could say that what lies ‘underneath,’ like the ‘tunnel of friendship,’ is the one root common to all religious sensitivities: the quest for an encounter with the divine,” the pope explained. “By looking deeply, we discover that we are all brothers and sisters, all pilgrims on our way to God, beyond what differentiates us.”
Indonesia, home to 280 million people, is 87% Muslim, with Catholics comprising around 3% of the population. Throughout his papacy, Francis has stressed the importance of Catholic-Muslim dialogue. In 2019, he became the first pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula, where he signed a joint declaration with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, a leading authority in Sunni Islam.
In addition to promoting interfaith dialogue, Pope Francis has made climate change a central theme of his pontificate. He was a key advocate for the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Jakarta, with its population of over 10 million, faces significant threats from climate change, including chronic flooding and sinking land. Indonesia’s government is currently developing a new capital, Nusantara, on the island of Borneo to address these challenges.
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
