Helsinki, 26 September 2025 – RfP Europe – Helsinki, Finland

Religions for Peace Europe announced the European regional launch of the Shared Sacred Flourishing initiative during the Religions for Peace Europe Board Annual Meeting in Helsinki. The launch took place in the context of the Board Meeting of the Religions for Peace Europe and the Global Convergence Challenge – Summit for Interfaith Unity and Peace, Religions for Peace Finland seminar, where diverse faith leaders, scholars, youth, and women of faith gathered to explore pathways for multi-religious collaboration in addressing Europe’s most urgent challenges.

The European launch of Shared Sacred Flourishing reflects the continent’s unique context: rising populism and xenophobia, the ongoing war in Ukraine and Gaza, rising hate monger, the heighten senses of escalation of conflict, the refugee crisis, climate anxiety, and social fragmentation across communities.

“We must reaffirm the moral responsibility of religious leaders to raise their voices against conflicts, to advocate for peace and justice everywhere, Prof. Genti Kruja, President of Religions for Peace Europe emphasised. “We underline the role of religions in advancing unity, human dignity, ecological responsibility, and sustainable peace under the guiding principle: Different Faiths, Common Action”.

Against this backdrop, the Shared Sacred Flourishing framework offers a transformative alternative to development paradigms focused solely on economic or political metrics. It insists that authentic flourishing must honour the sacred, foster inclusion, protect creation, and build just peace.

“Shared Sacred Flourishing is more than a framework-it is a call to recognize the sacred dimension of human dignity and the interconnectedness of all life,” said Dr. Francis Kuria, Secretary General of Religions for Peace International. “In Europe, this vision compels us to move beyond fragmented responses and work together for reconciliation, social cohesion, and the healing of our shared home.”

The concept of Shared Sacred Flourishing is a framework that seeks to restore the spiritual and moral dimension of integral and sustainable human development. Our faith traditions, although diverse in beliefs, share essential values such as mercy, love, compassion, solidarity, and reverence for creation, offering a common language to understand life with meaning and responsibility rather than only through material or technocratic logic. Ultimately, Shared Sacred Flourishing envisions a world where unity-amongst people and our planet-is realised.

Building on the global launch of the Shared Sacred Flourishing initiative by the World Council of Religions for Peace in Istanbul as well as recent regional adoptions in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, the European multi-faith movement has embraced Shared Sacred Flourishing as a moral, spiritual, and relational vision for peace, justice, and sustainable development that is grounded on the sacred.

With this launch, Religions for Peace Europe joins the global Religions for Peace movement in advancing Shared Sacred Flourishing across levels-global, regional, national, and grassroots. The initiative is to guide multi-religious collaboration on pressing European concerns, including peacebuilding, youth engagement, women’s leadership, ecological sustainability, and social inclusion.

Religions for Peace Europe calls upon governments, civil society, and all people of goodwill to partner in this vision. As the global community faces what the UN has called a “Development emergency”. Shared Sacred Flourishing offers a pathway of hope: one that unites the wisdom of faith traditions with the insights of science, and that seeks peace and flourishing for all.