Prince Hassan meets Pope

AMMAN — HRH Prince Hassan on Wednesday met Pope Francis in the Vatican as part of an official visit that will also include Rome and Florence. 

The meeting addressed methods of managing holy places in cities as spaces of shared values, not divisions, with Prince Hassan calling for “the enhancement of these sites’ role as platforms of dialogue, consolidating the status of intellect and promoting shared humanitarian and moral values towards unity rather than division”, according to a statement from the prince’s office. 

The prince called for the adoption of a debate graph to address key policy choices using physical, social and economic factors to identify patterns of vulnerability and to show historical trends of food security, natural shocks and land degradation as well as resilience building and social protection to assist in moving from a status-based approach to a vulnerability-based approach, the statement said.

According to the prince, this method could also be used to face challenges and foster economic and social growth to progress towards an approach that would lead to the integration of all stakeholders without discrimination. 

Pope Francis and Prince Hassan discussed His Holiness' initiative to "Reinvent the Global Educational Alliance” scheduled for May 14 next year, according to the statement. 

Prince Hassan stressed the importance of awareness of the anthropological aspect of education.

For his part, Pope Francis emphasised the necessity of entrenching the “humanitarian perspective” and promoting citizenship through the value of human solidarity.

During his visit, Prince Hassan also met with Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, during which the prince underlined the importance of cultivating a culture of intercultural connectivity through multilateralism that is founded on mutual respect and understanding, the statement said. 

The prince pointed to the conference organised recently by the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies as an open dialogue space to discuss, explore, analyse and understand the multifold aspects of “Islam in the West”. 

The conference attempted to bridge the gap between Muslim and Western positions and enable policy-makers to build better influential and productive policies to address it, according to the statement.

Cardinal Ravasi shed light on the importance of archaeological Christian sites and the need to promote visits to these sites from Italy. 

Prince Hassan also met Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, during which talks covered cooperation in various fields, especially with regards to dialogue between followers of religion and boosting ideals of citizenship, multilateralism and human solidarity, the statement read.