Peres, the pope and a plan for world peace

Two months after completing his term as Israel’s ninth president, 91-year-old Shimon Peres was pounding stony pavement at the Vatican.

Shimon Peres Pope Francis

Shimon Peres, a patriarch of today’s Israel, wants to leave a legacy. Most in this mode aim for things like monuments, memoirs and money. Peres’s aim is world peace. And in his opinion, Pope Francis, a man he calls “Holy Father,” is the one to make it happen. Vatican spokesmen concur, as does Italy’s representative for Islam, who “fully agrees.”

Two months after completing his term as Israel’s ninth president, 91-year-old Shimon Peres was pounding stony pavement at the Vatican.

On September 4, 2014, he was granted an impressive 45-minute meeting with Catholicism’s popular pontiff, a man Peres asserts is more powerful than the United Nations for advocating peace.


 

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The problem, as Peres sees it, is that “in the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationality. Today, however, they are being waged primarily in the name of religion.”

In an exclusive interview with the Catholic periodical, Famiglia Cristiana (The Christian Family), Peres divulged his plans: “Perhaps for the first time in history, the Holy Father is a leader not only respected by many people, but also by different religions and their leaders.”

“In fact,” Peres clarified, “he is perhaps the only truly respected leader” in the world today.

While Francis has refrained from commenting on Peres’s assessment, that same silence permits it. It also permits the framework of Peres’s idea to be tested in the crucible of world opinion.

“The United Nations has had its day,” Peres opined. “What we need is an organization of United Religions, a United Nations of religions.”

“If Peres’s proposal to the pope gains traction, it will create a global religious union . . . And apparently led from the seven hills of Rome.”

 

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