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Posted: June 7

Dialogue in Switzerland

(Saint Maurice, Switzerland) I came to this small town on the banks of the Rhone River to meet with the editors of the European Jesuit cultural journals. Last year, they met in Madrid; this year in Switzerland, a country which has two Jesuit journals despite its relatively small population. Saint Maurice is famous first of all as the site of the martyrdom of Maurice, who along with other Christian soldiers in the Theban Legion refused to worship the Roman gods, and were martyred around 300 A.D. during the persecution of Diocletian. The other claim to fame for Saint Maurice is the Abbey which was founded in 515 by King Sigismund on the site of an earlier 4th century monastery. The monastery thus claims to be the oldest one in the western Church.

Today Augustinian monks continue the tradition of prayer and maintain the monastery which was one of the key stopping points on the traditional pilgrimage route to Rome. The Rhone slips through a narrow defile which enabled the monastery to control travelers passing through this central corridor. We Jesuits enjoyed the hospitality of Franciscan Capuchins at the Foyer Franciscan, a much newer and smaller facility at the edge of the modern highway which takes travelers through a tunnel to bypass the river gap.

The editors meet partly for peer support and professional development, but they also have the custom of inviting learned guests to talk about local politics, both civil and religious. Father Pierre Emonet of Geneva, the Jesuit who organized the meeting, did quite well in getting one of Switzerland’s top politicians, Pascal Couchepin, head of the federal interior department, which is responsible for the medical system among other things. Couchepin spoke about Switzerland’s relationship with Europe on the eve of his country’s vote on adopting an open-border agreement with its European neighbors. Commentators wondered whether this mountain nation would respond to the same fears that had led to no votes in France and the Netherlands the previous week on the new European constitution. Since the Jesuit editors are very politically sensitive due to their work as commentators on contemporary issues, they were especially interested in these issues of unification.

I was more touched, though, by another guest, Shafique Keshavjee—a Protestant pastor whose family roots come from India by way of Kenya. He teaches at the university in Geneva as well as providing pastoral care to a parish. He specializes in inter-religious dialogue and is involved in an important ecumenical group. He shared with us several prayers he has written that present both the common element that Christians have with people of other religion as well as the differences. He also talked about some of the practical things his group does such as the common prayer services that bring people together and ground their dialogue in mutual respect and shared friendship.

It struck me that we Jesuits were trying to do much the same thing. Even though we share the core identity of Jesuits, we struggled throughout our days together to bridge the gap of languages. Most of the group speaks French, which seems to be the semi-official language of the group, but a few don’t know it. Our conversations veered in and out of French, English, Spanish, German and even Italian at points. I wish I could express myself in French but it has been over 30 years since I studied it at Saint Louis University and I was pleased to be able to follow the conversation. Despite the occasional confusion, we tried to understand each other, especially in the cultural differences underlying the languages. Unity is hard to come by, no matter how much you seem to have in common. The multi-language dialogue in which we were engaged echoed the inter-religious dialogue that Keshavjee explained and the international dialogue that Couchepin described. So we are still pilgrims, and Saint Maurice was a good place to rest for a few days on the journey.

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