Nairobi, 05 November, 2019 / 4:03 am (ACI Africa).
An institute facilitating learning about dialogue between various religions of the world including Islam was officially inaugurated Friday, November 1, bringing to nine the number of Institutes that constitute Tangaza University College, the Kenya-based institution of higher learning jointly owned by dozens of religious congregations.
Spearheaded by the religious congregation of the Missionaries of Africa and named Institute for Interreligious Dialogue and Islamic Studies (IRDIS), the center has put in place programs that seek to promote humanity’s “unity in one God,” the Institute Director told ACI Africa.
IRDIS is being launched under the theme, “Unity of God, Unity in God,” the Director of the Institute, Missionary of Africa Fr. Innocent Maganya told ACI Africa on the eve of the official inauguration of the Nairobi-based Institute and explained that the theme “goes very much with the vocation of the Institute, which is bringing people of different faiths together.”
“The aim of this inauguration event is to emphasize that we are all united in one God,” Fr. Maganya said and clarified citing the second Vatican Council's document Nostra Aetate, which addresses the relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, “One is our humanity, one is our destiny and one is our origin in God.”
A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Fr. Maganya said that encouraging good relations among religions, especially between Christians and Muslims, is important to his religious order, the 150-year-old Missionaries of Africa because the congregation was established among Muslims and took interreligious dialogue as its charism, being at the service of the local Church.
