A call from the world's religions.

Religion will play a crucial role in meeting the tremendous challenges of the coming century, former South African President Nelson Mandela told the thousands of religious and spiritual leaders who attended the eight-day Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa in early December. "We will have to reach deep into the wells of human faith," said Mandela, who stepped down as president in June. Warning that poverty was the "single most dangerous threat to society," he said that the world's citizens "need to draw on the resources of our spirituality."

The parliament resembled a colorful, global religious fair, with participants from more than 80 countries and nearly every religious persuasion represented in 800 events, workshops, discussions, symposia, art exhibits, prayer experiences, and even a film festival. The first such parliament was held in 1893 in Chicago, in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition. One hundred years later, it was repeated there, and now the organizers, the Chicago-based Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, plan to make it a regular event.

In the closing plenary session, the Dalai Lama insisted that change will require more than just prayers. "Change only takes place through action," said the Tibetan leader and Buddhist monk. "The motivation to serve others, that sense of caring, is the basic thing." One step toward action is the parliament's 158-page keynote document, "A Call to Our Guiding Institutions," which calls on believers to apply their common ethical principles of nonviolence, human dignity, and compassion to fight poverty, human rights abuses, and ecological damage.

The parliament opened on World AIDS Day, December 1, with a ceremony and display of the AIDS quilt, followed by a colorful procession of 4,000 costumed participants to District Six, a barren field that remains an open wound from the apartheid era. Once a thriving community of South Africans of different races and religions, its 60,000 residents were forcibly evacuated in the 1960s and their homes bulldozed to the ground. Parliament organizers designated District Six as the "spiritual center" of the event to remind participants of the marginalized, oppressed, and forgotten people in the world.

Among the prominent Catholics attending and presenting at the parliament were German theologian Hans Kung; Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of Chiapas, Mexico; Archbishop Lawrence Henry of Cape Town; and feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether and author Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B., both of the United States.