Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, extolled the cultural heritage preserved in the capital of Bosnia Herzegovina while speaking at the opening ceremony in Sarajevo of the conference “Living Together is the Future”, the appointment of interfaith dialogue organized in the spirit of Assisi by the Community of Sant’Egidio. Van Rompuy said that the cultural heritage is expressed in books like the Haggadah of Sarajevo, an extraordinary illuminated manuscript, “summa” of Jewish wisdom about the Passover story, rescued from destruction in separate times by two Muslims. It is also expressed in other religious texts which carry “that supplement of soul that makes us fully human”. A tribute to books or, rather, to the continuous interpretations in books. The antidote to fundamentalism, the opportunity for interpretations more complex than reality, a longing for the kind of spiritual unity all religions strive for. “There is a transcendental unity in religious traditions, diverse on the surface but united in their metaphysical core”. A unity, he stressed, not an identity but a common choice “of love and of taking a path towards and together with the other”.
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