Cardinal Dom Cláudio Hummes, Archbishop of São Paulo

The Universal Peace Federation (UPF) of Brazil invited Cardinal Dom Cláudio Hummes, Archbishop of São Paulo to attend the world peace tour event. Although the Cardinal could not come due to his busy schedule, he graciously agreed to meet us at the archdiocese residence in Sao Paulo on the morning of the event.

Brazil is the largest catholic country on earth with 290 bishops responsible for 135 millions believers. Dom Cláudio is in charge of one the largest Episcopal region of the world with six bishops under him, and at one point his name was mentioned in the international media as one possible successor of Pope John Paul II.

Christian Lepelletier and Iremar Possamai of the UPF and Dom Edson da Silva, Bishop of the Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church were received by the Cardinal. We introduced ourselves briefly and presented an introduction of the inter-religious vision of the UPF, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, last year.

It was the first time for Dom Claudio to meet representatives of the UPF. We had a friendly and positive dialogue in a good atmosphere that lasted about 30 minutes discussing the responsibility of the religious leaders to cooperate to find solutions to prevent violence, and the necessity of establishing inter-religious councils of peace to advising state governments.

Dom Claudio said that the Catholic Church was addressing these issues through existing institutions like the CNBB (National Conference of the Bishops of Brazil) and the CONIC (National Council of the Christian Churches). "And we welcome representatives from other faith to participate as observers," he said, "We respect religious freedom and diversity."

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