Nativity lessons

In Umbria the truth of the Nativity was revealed to me

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O�Connor

12 December 2007

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Life in Italy as a student priest

The next time you see one of those scenes of the birth of Christ in a manger, or your children or grandchildren in the Christmas play at school, perhaps you will think of the remarkable man who brought it to life for the first time in Greccio. Saint Francis of Assisi had a knack of making distant realities seem remarkably close, and we should be grateful to him for that. But he was also a man of vision and courage: four years before the ‘Bethlehem’ celebration in Greccio, he had travelled to Egypt to meet the caliph, Sultan Malik el-Kamil. It may well be that, at the outset, he saw his mission as an attempt to convert the caliph, which would fit the mood of the times, but what resulted was an honest discussion, and the caliph received him with kindness because he recognised in Francis a man of God. In this sense one could say he was an early exponent of dialogue between religions, but for him and the caliph it was essential to be able to speak the truth, and neither expected the other to hide his true beliefs.

I think that needs to be the spirit of all dialogue, and in a particular way the dialogue — or trialogue — between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land today. The spirit of Saint Francis, that honest, cheerful and holy man of God, could bring the distant reality of peace in that Land much closer.