April 25, 2025
Your Eminence
It is with deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, and we give thanks to God for his life and witness.
The IFOR would like to express its admiration, and appreciation to his rich and blessed life. He was a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration for just love, rich spirituality, and deep integrity. we have lost a prophetic voice in these bleak times of our world.
During his pontificate, he showed himself to be an advocate of peace based on justice and non-violence. He has tirelessly appealed to heads of state and peoples to work for this peace. He has shown particular concern for the people of Gaza and Palestine. He made a personal commitment to end the war in the Central African Republic, with strong gestures during his trip to Bangui in 2015, but also in South Sudan during the meetings organized in Rome in February 2019 and during his trip to Juba in 2023. He also prayed for the martyred people of Ukraine and Burma, and for all the victims of war around the world.
We give thanks for his support for evangelical nonviolence, as expressed in his message of January 1st, 2017, “Nonviolence: style of a policy for peace”, and on the occasion of the two conferences organized on this theme at the Vatican in 2016 and 2018 by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Our interfaith movement has been very sensitive to the joint declaration on human brotherhood, which he signed on February 4, 2019 in Abu Dhabi with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, and to the many meetings he has had with leaders of various religious confessions. He took up and developed this theme of universal brotherhood in his encyclical Fratelli tutti in 2020.
We would also like to give thanks for his courageous and faithful defense of migrants and the poorest of the poor, which has marked his entire pontificate, since his visit and speech on the island of Lampedusa on July 8, 2013.
Likewise, the publication of his encyclical Laudato Si in 2015 raised awareness and encouraged the commitment of many Christians and men and women of good will to actively defend the environment.
It is our wish that Pope Francis' inspirations remain alive at the heart of the Catholic Church's action and prayer. We pray that God may send and embolden just and empathetic leaders to continue in this less travelled road of peace, nonviolence, and spirituality.
Yours respectfully
Zoughbi Zoughbi
IFOR President
Pope Francis among cardinals in front on St Peter square (Photo C. Renoux)