INTERRELIGIOUS VISITS – WORLD RELIGION DAY

On January 16, World Religion Day, and January 27, World Remembrance Day for the Victims of Genocide, we made a series of visits as an Intercultural Dialogue Association.

Our aim in these visits was primarily to strengthen the ties between the 3 major religions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Of course, we also wanted to examine the Orthodox and Catholic ways of worship and take a closer look at the genocide of the Jews, and share their feelings.

First of all, we visited the Orthodox church “Cyril and Methodius” and met Mr. Borislav, the priest who invited us. He welcomed us very well. Then we talked about dialogue, inter-religious dialogue, how little we actually meet among ourselves as people of different religions, and how we should meet more often.

Then we visited the famous Pink Church in the center of Ljubljana, the “Franciscan Church” and joined the prayer choir performed by young Catholics/students every Wednesday evening at 19:00. Afterwards, we met with Mr. Pavla Jakop, one of the priests of the Church who invited us and talked about the “World Religion Day”, the importance of dialogue and Mr. Pavla’s visits to Turkey.

Last but not least, with the invitation of Robert Waltl, the president of the Jewish Cultural Center of Ljubljana, we attended the commemoration event on “World Holocaust Victims Remembrance” day. We remembered these inhuman massacres that took place in these lands 78 years ago and said “We remember” together.

We realized the importance of dialogue between people of different religions, nationalities, and races in order to prevent the repetition of these and similar events anywhere in the world.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Mr. Borislav Livopoljac, Mr. Pater Pavla Jakop, and Mr. Robert Waltl for receiving us at their places during these visits.

We are already very excited about the intercultural and interreligious dialogues we can have in the future.