Atrás The Office for Religious Affairs: a comprehensive approach

Purpose:

The Office of Religious Affairs (OAR) of the Barcelona City Council is a municipal service whose main objective is to serve as a reference point for religious and spiritual matters, as well as everything related to religious entities and communities and their beliefs in the city of Barcelona.

The OAR works to ensure and promote the exercise of the right to religious freedom in the city. It strives to address the diversity of beliefs and convictions present in Barcelona from an intercultural perspective. The recipients of this service include religious entities and communities in the city, the personnel, and municipal services of the Barcelona City Council, as well as the entire population of Barcelona.

The OAR, as a specialised service, also intervenes in situations that require facilitating communication or mediation among various parties, provided that at least one of them is a religious community or entity.

Stimulus/Rationale:

In the year 2022, the city registered a total of 502 places of worship and 980 religious communities and entities representing 29 different religious or spiritual traditions. In order to advance in the institutional and symbolic acknowledgement of diversity, the Bcn Intercultural Plan 2021-2030 aims at promoting specific actions to increase awareness and acknowledgement of diversity based on religious pluralism. It also aims at fostering actions to promote knowledge of the various cultural and religious forms, world views and expression.

Additionally, the Plan sets as an objective advancing in the management of religious diversity based on the creation of spaces for participation, dialogue and positive interaction between different religious denominations and other citizens and consolidating and expanding the religious dialogue groups linked to the territory.

Process:

Some of the OAR initiatives and services:

Mediation:

The specific issues that may arise are quite varied, ranging from noise complaints to the possibility of two religious communities sharing a space. This includes facilitating agreements with the technical services of a city district to ensure compliance with current regulations or managing opposition from residents regarding the possible opening of a new place of worship for a religious community, among other matters.

The OAR also periodically coordinates with the Office for Non-Discrimination (OND) of the Barcelona City Council in cases of discrimination and violations of human rights related to religious freedom. On some occasions, we collaborate jointly in situations of discrimination, violation, or aggression against individuals, communities, or entities with religious or belief convictions.

The OAR, as a specialized service, plays an essential role in these mediation processes and in seeking consensus solutions among the parties involved in conflicts.

Interreligious dialogue groups

Since 2017 the Barcelona City Council is promoting a programme to create and maintain different interreligious dialogue groups in various neighborhoods of the city. Currently, there are four groups working in Sants-Montjuïc, Nou Barris, Zona Nord and Besós-Maresme.

The interreligious dialogue groups are meeting spaces where people of various beliefs and convictions from a specific territory gather with the purpose of highlighting and making visible religious pluralism in the city, defending the right to religious freedom, thought and conscience, break prejudices between the various religious traditions and improve the social cohesion of the territory. The Groups also decide on joint actions to be carried out in schools or social entities around the immediate environment. It is a way to support the idea that religious traditions are a cultural, ethical and spiritual heritage of all humanity.

For several years, the UNESCO Association for Interreligious Dialogue (AUDIR) was in charge of this project. Nowadays it is managed by Porta Cabot.

Aside from the groups promoted directly by the City Council, there are two other groups that are functioning in Barcelona. The interreligious group of Gràcia district linked to AUDIR and the Interreligious Group of Raval, which is part of Fundació Tot Raval.

Awareness raising activities

One of the main educational activities of the OAR is the organisation of school visits to various places of worship in the city with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of the right to freedom of conscience and religion as well as bringing the reality of religious diversity in the city closer to primary (upper cycle) and secondary school pupils.

To facilitate these visits, the ORA has a website with educational material containing a brief introduction to the different religious traditions present in Barcelona: “Get to know the religions of Barcelona”. Since its launch in 2009 and up to 2022, more than 6.000 pupils from different schools in Barcelona and beyond have visited religious centres in the city.

The World Interfaith Harmony Week

It was launched by the United Nations in 2011 as a decentralised initiative, taking place all over the world every year in the first week of February. It is a week of interfaith dialogue and interaction, including events such as “harmony breakfasts”, movie screenings followed by discussions or joint community work/projects that aim to tackle a common issue co-operatively (e.g. environmental issues, homelessness, illness). The week especially provides a platform for interfaith groups and other groups of goodwill to demonstrate and share their work. Based on

The Common Word initiative that aimed to foster dialogue between specifically the Muslim and the Christian faith, The World Interfaith Harmony Week similarly aims to foster dialogue, but between all kinds of faith groups, including those groups with no faith. Whereas The Common Word initiative is based on “Love of God, and Love of the Neighbour”, The World Interfaith Harmony Week is based on “Love of the Good, and Love of the Neighbour”.

Several events are organised yearly in the city, as the “Concert of Three Cultures”, characterised by music from Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Inter-convictional ceremony in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack in Barcelona

A ceremony was organised in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Barcelona on 17 August 2017. The objective of the initiative was to offer an open space in which to pay tribute to the victims reflecting the diversity of beliefs and convictions which shape Barcelona. To do so, the different elements that composed the ceremony were discussed and agreed with religious communities, interfaith groups, lay and secularist organisations.

The ceremony involved readings of different sacred and humanistic texts and an offering of flowers (which were taken later to La Rambla), with the participation of 34 young members representing different religious communities, non-religious organisations and interfaith initiatives.

The ceremony was attended by 800 people, among them city and regional authorities and religious leaders, was reported by various newspapers and broadcast by different TV and internet channels. It had a huge impact due to the large number of people who followed it and the novelty of the proposal. The vast majority of comments received, from both secular and religious citizens, were very positive.

The action was implemented thanks to the co-operation between Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Government, and it was developed in partnership with several religious communities and non-religious organisations, as well as interfaith initiatives.

News and links related to the ceremony:

Key Reference documents:  OAR report (2019)

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