American students attend
anniversary of Document on Human fraternity
 |
| In Abu Dhabi, students from Notre Dame School in Cleverland, USA |
Dr Michael Bates, President of the Notre Dame Schools in
Cleveland, USA, takes a delegation of students to Abu Dhabi ob the anniversary
of the signing of the Document on Human Fraternity.
By Francesca Merlo
Dr Michael Bates “can’t believe” that so much has happened
in the past year since Pope Francis visited the UAE. While speaking to Vatican
Radio’s Sr Bernadette Reis, he explains that a delegation from the US embassy
visited the students of Cleveland’s Notre Dame School. They watched a film on
the Pope’s visit and “broke bread between our students and Emirati students
outside Cleveland”, he says. Dr Bates explains that he was later contacted by
the embassy, who asked him to “bring students from Cleveland, here to Abu
Dhabi, for this occasion”.
Abu Dhabi is currently hosting an event to mark the one year
anniversary since Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar signed the
Document on Human Fraternity.
Dr Bates explains that he has experienced a strong “sense of
faith and inspiration” to peace-making since his arrival in Abu Dhabi.
Everywhere he has felt “the atmosphere of love and care”, and the desire to
“recognize that we need not spend all our resources to enforce hate and to
enforce war”. All this, he says, shows that “we can build peace with one
another just by simply engaging one another and love”.
The Ministry of Education in Abu Dhabi in the UAE “is
implementing the Human Fraternity Document in grades seven through to twelve”.
So, far, Dr Bates says that back home they have implemented it in their grade
12, and “are looking forward to expanding that”.
The 11 students that travelled with him to Abu Dhabi “are in
awe”, he says. Not just “of the ability to travel 7000 miles to be here”, nor
of the “wonder of what this place is”. Dr Bates says they are in awe about what
it has meant to them to “meet other students”.
They “broke barriers so quickly”, he says, discussing their
lives, their homework apps and their school lunches. Dr Bates says that the
children were especially “humbled” when they learned that the children
attending one of the school they visited learn “three languages: English,
Arabic and Chinese”. They exchanged contacts, he says, and “excitingly”,
promised to stay in contact.
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