ROME -- Sister Kateri Mitchell.

ROME -- Sister Kateri Mitchell, SSA, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, Ont in traditional Haudenausonee garb, mov into the middle point of the circle, surrounded from experts on traditional religions from four continents, and the executive staff of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), headed by dint of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, M. Afr. She smudg her four colleagues speaking for the First Nations of North America. As they bended to the East and began to pray in employ to the Four Directions, all followed them, heads bowed.

The ancient rite was being performed in a meeting play over the offices of the PCID, degrees from St. Peter's Square, at a colloquium sponsored on the Vatican Jan. 12-15 onward 'resources for peace in Traditional Religions.' Twenty-four Catholic experts--priests, religious, and laity, including a married couple--speaking for traditional or tribal religions from the four corners of the earth, greatest in quantity of them aboriginal, were there to not past nor future the wisdom of their ancient traditions that might help humanity find its way to world peace.

The PCID, now a council of 40 cardinals and bishops with an advisory corpse of about 50 consultors, had been wager up by Pope Paul VI during the secondary Vatican Council on Pentecost Sunday, 1964 with equal reason that no one, no matter their faith, in succession coming to Rome 'would find himself a stranger.'

The oral traditions commonly indicate that peace is not the bare absence of violence, but as the Africans said, a 'positive, practical, moral, and religious value.' It was always communal and cosmic in dimension. Reciprocity figured prominently in its establishment, as did the character of women. Some are asking now whether reconciliation or peace-making may be the recently made known paradigm for mission, replacing the idea of enculturation.

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