ROME, Italy — The Vatican sent out a copy of U.S. President Joe Biden’s message for the International Day of Human Fraternity Friday, along with those of Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb.
The International Day of Human Fraternity commemorates the February 4, 2019, signing of the Abu Dhabi declaration on the same theme by the pope and the grand imam.
In his message, Biden notes sacred teachings across faith traditions command that we “serve and protect the most vulnerable,” a statement that will perturb many Catholics given Biden’s dedication to abortion-on-demand, which tramples the rights of the most vulnerable members of society: the unborn.
Among the grave challenges that are “simply too great for any one nation or group of people to solve,” Biden mentions “the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic” as well as “the existential climate crisis,” which, he contends, require global cooperation from people of all backgrounds, cultures, faith, and beliefs.
Pope Francis greets Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyeb, the grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, after an Interreligious meeting at the Founder’s Memorial in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Feb. 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
In his message, the grand imam offers his own list of the most pressing “crises and challenges of contemporary humanity,” which include “distress of the orphans, the poor, the displaced, and the afflicted; those who suffer from both hard life and the hard hearts of wealthy people wielding riches, authority, and leverage.”
“Such vulnerable people have fallen victims to modern materialism in all its concomitant excessive selfishness, cherishing of lusts and desires, and idolization of humans and their individualist inclinations,” the imam declares.
In his own address, Pope Francis called for universal fraternity as “a bulwark against hatred, violence and injustice.”
“Fraternity is one of the fundamental and universal values that ought to undergird relationships between peoples, so that the suffering or disadvantaged do not feel excluded and forgotten, but accepted and supported as part of the one human family. We are brothers and sisters!” he declared.
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