October 2025: Interreligious Celebration with the New Pope Leo XIV.

May the Great Perfection be with You

Report about the 60th Anniversary Celebrations of Nostrae Aetate, Vatican City, October 28, 2025

In front of St. Peter’s Basilica, incense mingles with autumn air. Reporters press between rabbis, Dharma scholars, imams, monks, and cardinals. Sixty years after Nostra Aetate, the groundbreaking declaration of the Second Vatican Council, the world returns to the place where the Church first learned not to fear the unfamiliar.

Yet the sky above Rome feels heavy. Antisemitic attacks, anti-Muslim slogans — they hang over the anniversary like a silent storm. “It feels as if Nostra Aetate is being tested once again,” murmurs a theologian. In the corridors of the Vatican, tensions hum. The wounds of world politics are fresh, the divisions deep.

By evening, the Paul VI Hall fills with the songs of young people from five continents. Hebrew, Sanskrit, Latin — voices intertwine like prayers of a single humanity. The artists honour every faith in turn, weaving light, rhythm, and reverence into one shared offering. When they reach Buddhism, they raise the signboard of a Dharma wheel up with their arms and dance to it, as if to awaken the vibration of the Dharma itself.

Later, Pope Leo XIV steps before the delegates. No grand staging, no sceptre’s shine — only the quiet dignity of a humble man. “Dialogue is not a tactic or a tool,” he says. “It is a way of life — a path of the heart that transforms all who participate in it.” His words do not echo and fade; they settle like rain on thirsty soil. “Sixty years ago, a seed of hope was planted,” the Pope continues. “Today your presence shows that it has grown into a mighty tree. Nostra Aetate reminds us of what unites us: we belong to one human family — one in origin, one in goal.”

The sixty representatives of the world’s religions rise. The Pope descends the steps, walking calmly through the rows, shaking each of our hands. No escort, no protocol — only his gentle, human gaze. I bow my head and say softly, “May the Great Perfection be with you.” He looks slightly surprised, then smiles. “Thank you,” he says. I hand a cardinal a stone from Mount Kailash — for billions of Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Bön practitioners the navel of the world, abode of ultimate reality, the divine father and mother of all beings. The cardinal, visibly moved, promises to tell the Holy Father its meaning.

In that moment, Nostra Aetate is no longer a document but a living presence — the quiet language of love that reveals itself through understanding. Beneath the vast dome of St. Peter’s, the evening light flows like liquid gold across marble walls. Beside me, a rabbi’s wife murmurs that her husband, for the first time in decades, fears wearing his kippah in public. For a long moment, everything within me falls silent. I am deeply shaken. Rome, in these days, is no symbol of perfect unity — but the place where unity begins again, every single day.

Sixty years after Nostra Aetate, its message feels more fragile — and more vital — than ever: True dialogue urgently calls for the humility of the heart.

About the Author: Lama Sherab Gyatso is a student of AR and teaches Dzogchen at the Vidyadhara Centre and within AR’s Dzogchen Nyingthig Community. A scholar and practitioner of Dzogchen, Sanskrit, and the non-dual traditions, he has more than thirty years of experience in the study and practice of these traditions and more than twenty years of engagement in interreligious exchange, both at a scholarly level and through personal encounter.