Buenos Aires Interfaith

On Tuesday, a contact invited me to an event hosted by the La Dirección General de Cultos (General Administration of Religions) of the Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires city government). They were celebrating the publication of a new book by the office, Personalidades religiosas de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires: hombres y mujeres creyentes que dejaron su huella (Religious Personalities from Buenos Aires: believing men and women who left their footprint).

The event was very fancy, and had a talk by several figures involved in academia and government discussing Interfaith initiatives and the importance of religion and religious diversity in Buenos Aires. (Actually, here I will split hairs and mention that this post is perhaps misnamed. This discussion in particular, and discourse in general I think, in this city about this topic is not "interfaith" but rather "interreligious." The distinction I make is that here celebrating religious diversity is couched in strictly institutional understandings of religion.)

The event took place in an important part of Buenos Aires, and in a beautiful room called El Salón Dorado. Before going to the event, I stopped in at the Catedral Metropolitana, which is beautiful. I visited the tomb inside of General San Martín, and stupidly asked another visitor who he was. I now realize that this would be the equivalent of me asking somebody back in the States who George Washington was.

The book which was published has about 30 personalities, most of whom are Catholic. They are two Muslims included in the book, which was published this year. One is Sheij Hisham Kabbani (pg. 70), a Lebanese Sufi spiritual leader from the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order. Though he does not reside in Buenos Aires, he visited in 2011. The other Muslim figure is Ayatollah Muhamad Taqi Misbah Yazdi (pg. 90), an Irani Shii Ayatollah who visited Buenos Aires in 1997.

A really bad picture of the Salón Dorado, where the book presentation was held 

The tomb of General San Martín, patron of Argentina, in the Catedral Metropolitana

Part of the Catedral Metropolitana