Religious freedom is the path to peace

Pope Benedict has been preaching that message all along. The media paid particularly close attention this time at the Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s, where he baptized seven new converts to the faith. The presence of one of them made the message more personally poignant.

Italy’s most prominent Muslim commentator, who has long spoken out against Islamic fanaticism and received death threats as a result, converted to Roman Catholicism on Saturday during the Vatican’s Easter vigil service presided over by the pope.

The death threats are key to grasping the gravity of preaching this message to the world. And equally, of the world listening.

In his homily, Benedict reflected on the meaning of baptism, saying through the sacrament, the Lord enters into the heart of the new Catholic.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

As he pronounced the words, Vatican television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with the other candidates for baptism.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said of Allam before the service that anyone who chooses to become a Catholic of his or her own free will has the right to receive the sacrament.

Lombardi said the pope administers the sacrament “without making any ‘difference of people,’ that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church.”

“Faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world.”

What a witness to the persistence of faith.