Fraternity in action: Cardinals Ayuso and Czerny travel to Abu Dhabi for the Zayed Prize for Human Fraternity
Cardinals Ayuso and Czerny travel to the United Arab Emirates for the Zayed Prize for Human Fraternity.
(Vatican, 2/24/2022) Cardinals Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, M.C.C.J., president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and Michael Czerny, S.J., prefect ad interim of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, travel to the United Arab Emirates to attend the Zayed Award ceremony. This award aims to recognize individuals or entities around the world who have embodied the ideal of human fraternity expressed in the declaration signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, on February 4, 2019. This document inspired the UN to declare February 4 as the International Day of Human Fraternity, which was celebrated for the first time in 2021.
The award honors individuals and organizations that have put into action the spirit of the 2019 declaration by building bridges of fraternity between nations and peoples, and by fostering peace. Before the International Day on last February 4, Cardinal Ayuso told Vatican News: “Our call is that all people belonging to different religious traditions and organizations take their own responsibility in promoting this beautiful and remarkable concept that is fraternity, and that it is absolutely necessary for today’s world and for our future.” Cardinal Ayuso is president of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, the organization that grants the Zayed Award.
The Zayed Award ceremony will take place next Saturday, February 26 in Abu Dhabi. Cardinal Czerny, a member of the jury of this edition of the award, believes that this award will become a sign of hope: “It’ll be a while before people know about it. But with patience, I think it will become a sign of hope that people who give themselves to generate and protect and to promote human fraternity, deserve recognition. And hopefully, it will contribute to a greater human fraternity throughout the world.”
A six-member jury has selected the recipients of this third edition of the award. The jury included—in addition to Cardinal Czerny—Mahamadou Issoufou, former president of Niger; Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former deputy president of South Africa, and former UN under-secretary-general and executive director of UN Women; Leah Pisar, president of the Aladdin Project; José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of East Timor; and Judge Mohamed Abdelsalam, secretary-general of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity.
The first edition of the prize, in 2019, was awarded to the signatories of the Document on Human Fraternity, Pope Francis, and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb. In 2021, the award went to the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, and the French-Moroccan activist against extremism Latifa Ibn Ziaten.