The photo of the kiss of Pope Francis who traveled the world

With his trip to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis entered history by becoming the first pontiff to visit the Arabian Peninsula, the cradle of Islam. On the first day of his visit, he also gave the world a iconic and viral photo: a kiss with his "beloved friend and brother" Imam Ahmed al Tayeb, the highest authority of the Al Azhar Mosque and Sunni Islam.

This historic gesture that shows the rapprochement of the two religions He recalled the "brotherly kiss" that the communist leaders of the Cold War, Leonidas Brezhnev (USSR) and Erich Honecker (GDR) had in their mouths.

The picture was taken Monday, during the first day of the Pope in Abu Dhabi, where he participated in a interfaith international meeting and signed a document on the "fight against extremism".

All day, the pope, dressed in white, and the great Sunni Imam of the Egyptian institute Al Azhar, in black, showed themselves together, fraternally, in front of the great mosque Zayed, one of the largest on the planet, and then they embraced the interfaith conference stand, bathed in a rain of olive leaves.

Both they condemned all discrimination against religious minorities and called fraternity.

Before traveling, the pope had called Al Tayeb "Friend and dear brother". He had already visited it during his trip to Egypt in 2017 and before their meeting at the Vatican. In fact, it is Al Tayeb who received the Pope at the Abu Dhabi Airport.

The pope's speech

In his speech at the meeting, Francisco spoke of justice, non-violence, peace and disarmament, expressing his strong opposition to the use of religion for non-peaceful purposes.

For Francisco, "There is no violence that finds justification in religion".

"Human fraternity demands from us, representatives of religions, the duty to ban all shades of approval of the word war," he said. In the pontiff's vision, war is synonymous with "misery" and "cruelty".

"Together, brothers of the only human family sought by God, let us commit ourselves against the logic of armed power, against the commodification of relations, the arming of borders, the lifting of walls, the gagging of the poor", a- he declared.

To all of this "we oppose the gentle power of prayer and the daily engagement of dialogue," he added.