A Human Journey of Discovery: The Catholic Church and Interreligious Dialogue

Welcome to La Civiltà Cattolica’s podcast. In this episode, Michael Kelly, SJ interviews Archbishop Dr Felix Machado of Vasai. It does not take us very long in our human journey to discover something very simple: most people aren’t like us. And, of course, that also that realization occurs us  when it comes to our basic beliefs and convictions about what is important, what is valuable. We don’t have a lot of consensus about that. So, often what we do is cover over the areas of difference and never really investigate them. The same is true when it comes to religion. We can  be presented with people who have a completely different sense of God, life, the world, religion. And often, because we feel overwhelmed by it, we don’t want to go into it in any great detail. It has become a major pre-occupation for the Catholic Church, to work out how we are different, how we carry on with our differences with other human beings. So we have a whole enterprise called inter-religious dialogue and  inter-religious relations. It is a big thing for the Catholic Church in Asia, and in many other parts of the world. But most especially in Asia because Asia is the home of all the great religions. Here Archbishop Felix Machado who is head of the committee responsible for fostering intelligent, effective and significant engagement between religions for the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences talks to Michael Kelly, SJ. Archbishop Dr Felix Machado of Vasai is  Secretary General of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and has served as Chairperson of the Office of Interreligious Dialogue and the Desk for Ecumenism (CBCI), as well as Chairperson of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (OEIA) of Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). He is currently a bishop member of the Pontifical Council for Inter Religious Dialogue and previously served as under-secretary of the PCID Michael Kelly, SJ is the publisher of the English language edition of the 171-year-old Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, published in English since 2017 and available in Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese apart from English. Image Courtesy: Archdiocese of Vasai Anchored by Robert Barber and produced by Binu Alex for La Civiltà Cattolica