SEOUL, August 24 (AJP) - An idea that surfaced in Astana days after the September 11 attacks has grown into a standing international institution, with a permanent secretariat, its own awards, a 10-year strategy and a place on the United Nations record.
The Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions has met eight times since 2003, always in the Kazakh capital, and is scheduled to convene again in 2028.
The proposal took shape during Pope John Paul II's visit to Kazakhstan from Sept. 22 to 25, 2001, 11 days after the attacks on the United States. Kazakhstan suggested seating the leaders of the world's major faiths at one table at a moment when much of the world was bracing for a religious rupture.
The first Congress opened two years later, on Sept. 23, 2003, with 17 delegations from 13 countries. Participants condemned extremism and terrorism as having nothing to do with the substance of religion, and agreed to meet every three years.
The scale has widened steadily since. The eighth Congress, held Sept. 17 and 18, 2025, drew more than 100 delegations from around 60 countries, spanning Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism and Shinto.
The high-water mark came in 2022, when Pope Francis traveled to Astana for the seventh Congress and appeared alongside Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem and the chief rabbis of Israel. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who had been expected, did not attend.
Each Congress has left something behind. The first created a permanent Secretariat, the second adopted a set of Principles of Interreligious Dialogue that the forum treats as its founding code, and later meetings added a Council of Religious Leaders, two awards for contributions to interfaith dialogue and, in 2019, a dedicated center that now operates as the International Center for Interfaith and Interreligious Dialogue.
The Secretariat meets every year between congresses in the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, a pyramid on Tauelsizdik Avenue built for the purpose. Its working agency reports more than 30 memorandums with outside bodies, among them UNESCO, Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, the Holy See's Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Moscow Patriarchate.
A development concept commissioned in 2022 and running to 2033 commits the forum to problems well beyond theology, including poverty, inequality, environmental crisis and the protection of religious sites. It also states that Congress bodies may take part in mediation for the peaceful settlement of disputes, an unusual ambition for a dialogue platform.
Congress declarations are filed with the UN Secretary-General for registration as official General Assembly documents. The 2022 declaration was transmitted by Kazakhstan's permanent representative and entered the UN record that September.
The 2025 Congress went further. Organizers said the forum hosted an official United Nations event on its own platform for the first time, a special session on safeguarding religious sites convened under the UN Alliance of Civilizations and tied to a plan of action developed under Miguel Ángel Moratinos.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev chaired the plenary, and Pope Leo XIV sent a message. Muslim World League Secretary-General Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa attended as guest of honor, using his address to raise the situation in Gaza.
The meeting produced the Astana Peace Declaration 2025, a document of 34 points adopted, as the forum's rules provide, by a majority of delegates rather than by consensus. It instructs the Secretariat to prepare a paper on faith and climate change, calls for international norms on artificial intelligence grounded in human rights, and urges the prevention of any use of nuclear weapons. It also endorses Tokayev's call for a new global movement for peace and describes Kazakhstan as a global center for interfaith dialogue.
What the Congress can point to is durability. Two decades on, an institution that began as a Kazakh proposal draws the leaders of most of the world's major faiths to the same room every three years.
Delegates closed the 2025 session by agreeing to return. The ninth Congress is set for Astana in 2028.
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