Visit of the President of Ireland for Love in Chaos: Spiritual Growth and the Search for Peace. An Ecumenical and Interreligious Roundtable. 22 March 2007

The Lay Centre sponsored an ecumenical and interreligious roundtable entitled "Love in Chaos:  Spiritual Growth and the Search for Peace” with the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese.

Taking part of the title from her book, the dialogue focused on the relationship between spiritual growth and the search for peace, especially in situations of conflict.  Interventions by Leijla Dmitri, a Muslim woman from Macedonia, who is a Doctoral Candidate at Cambridge University in England, and Professor Daniel Boyarin, a Jew from the United States, who is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, focused on their experiences of how spiritual growth bolsters the search for peace, and love can emerge from the midst of the chaos of violence.  Jean Kabahizi, a Catholic from Rwanda, spoke about coming to a deeper faith through the experience of the loss of his family during that country’s genocide in 1994.

Donna Orsuto welcomed some twenty participants to the Lay Centre, including the Irish Ambassador to Italy, His Excellency Frank Cogan and the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, His Excellency Philip McDonagh.   After President McAleese responded to the presentations, the group moved to the Pontifical Irish College for the Celebration of Daytime Prayer in the college chapel and a reception hosted by the rector, Msgr. Liam Bergin.

Donna Orsuto (center) introducing President McAleese to those gathered for the roundtable discussion.  Prof. Daniel Boyarin (left) presented on the need for a “dialogue of life” among believers in diverse religious traditions in order to overcome hostility and animosity. 

Lejla Dmitri (left) presents on her experience as a Muslim of coming to faith in wartorn Macedonia, while Cenap Aydin and Dr. Ana Grenfell McDonagh listen.

Jean Kabahizi (left) who recounted his family’s massacre during the genocide in his native Rwanda, and Zeynep Ozbek listen as President McAleese responds to his intervention.

President McAleese spoke about the importance of identity, conflict and reconciliation in the paradigm of family life as a model for interreligious dialogue in the contemporary world.

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