All Kinds of Clerics Join Peace Prayer : Some Governments, Insurgent Groups Agree to Papal Plea

A medicine man from Montana, snake worshipers from Africa and the Dalai Lama joined Pope John Paul II and more than 150 other religious leaders from around the globe today for nine hours of prayer and fasting for world peace.

In a gesture of solidarity and support, several of the world’s warring governments and insurgent groups promised to observe the Pope’s appeal for a 24-hour truce. However, violence and fighting were reported in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

After hours of fasting and separate prayers, the participants in the “World Day of Prayer for Peace” walked in silent processions through the stone streets of this medieval hill town to the Basilica of St. Francis. Police and plainclothes officers trying to clear the narrow alleys kept pushing pilgrims and tourists who had flocked to Assisi in busloads.

Participants Offer Prayers

On the steps of the 800-year-old church where the 13th-Century saint is entombed, representatives of the various religions offered a public prayer, each followed by a brief period of meditation.

The Pope, in his closing address at the basilica, called on government leaders to fashion “a strategy of peace.”

“Either we learn to walk together in peace and harmony, or we drift apart and ruin ourselves and others,” he said.

Then the participants, from more than three dozen countries, raised olive branches, the symbol of peace.

The joint peace appeal, according to the Vatican, could reach 3.5 billion believers worldwide, or about 70% of the earth’s population.

Wide Range of Cultures

Besides John Paul, leaders attending the service included Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie and the Dalai Lama, the traditional high priest of Lamaism, a form of Buddhism. They were joined by more than 150 others, including John Pretty-On-Top, a Crow Indian medicine man from Montana; snake worshipers from Togo, Ghana and Kenya; Muslim imams, Jewish rabbis, Shintoists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians.

Among those who said they accepted the Pope’s call for a 24-hour truce were Israel, factions in Lebanon’s decade-old civil war, contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government, Tamil rebels and government troops in Sri Lanka, the Polisario fighters seeking independence for Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, Christian and animist rebels in southern Sudan, leftist rebels in El Salvador, Chile and Colombia, and guerrillas battling the Vietnamese-installed leadership in Cambodia.

However, fighting between Muslims and Christian militias broke the 24-hour cease-fire in Beirut. Hostilities continued in the 6-year-old Iran-Iraq war, with Iran’s official news agency reporting that Iranian gunners had shot down an Iraqi warplane. Iraq denied the report.

Minor violations of the truce were reported in Sri Lanka.

In Northern Ireland, the predominantly Catholic Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for setting off a bomb today that derailed a freight train.