BANDUNG, Indonesia (UCAN) -- The bishop of Bandung has asserted that the way of evangelization in West Java, central Indonesia, is for Catholics to build peaceful coexistence and solidarity with the province's majority Muslims.

The Church in West Java should follow the example of Saint Francis of Assisi and his confreres who went to the Saracens not as conquerors but to "live with and serve them in the name of the Lord," Bishop Alexander Djajasiswaja of Bandung told a May 9-11 catechetical seminar here in the West Java capital.

"In living with their Muslim brothers and sisters, they experienced many good things in the Muslims' life, faith and how they lived their faith," Bishop Djajasiswaya told the seminar's some 50 participants.

"They began to realize that God, the source of all goodness, is also present and works among the Muslims," and the new awareness helped the Franciscans "eliminate prejudices and build mutual understanding and trust," he said.

The seminar for the West Java Church, which includes Jakarta archdiocese and the suffragan dioceses of Bandung and Bogor, aimed to find a suitable way of doing evangelization among the Sundanese, most of whom are Muslims.

The Sundanese are the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia after the Javanese. More than 20 million of them live in West Java.

Bishop Djajasiswaya admitted that it is very difficult for Catholicism to take root in Sunda land, pointing out that "Towards a Sundanic Islam and an Islamic Sunda" is not only the motto but also the obsession of local Muslims. Altogether Muslims form more than 98 percent of West Java's population.

Of the Muslim groups in the province, from the tolerant secular-modern to the fundamentalist anti-Christian, the Javanese bishop noted that only Nahdlatul Ulama "openly accepts the existence of Churches in West Java."

The close relationship between Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, awakening of Islamic scholars) and the Catholic Church was reflected in NU's help in guarding churches in West Java against Muslim attackers in late 1996 and early 1997.

Ignatius Bambang Sugiharto, a lecturer at Bandung's Parahyangan Catholic University, noted that Sundanese consider Islam a part of their identity, and even the moderate among them cannot be expected to turn to another religion.

However, the Church still has the opportunity to build at least friendly relations with the Sundanese without necessarily converting them to Christianity, the Javanese Catholic intellectual added.

"As the Sundanese society is in the process of searching for a new spirituality, the Church should reformulate a spirituality that invites the sympathy of the Sundanese," Sugiharto proposed.

"It is enough for the Church to proclaim love. If later (the Sundanese Muslims) voluntarily and freely choose to join the community of love (Church), what can one do?" he said.

Sugiharto, whose wife is a Muslim, asked fellow Catholics to respect other religions as well as challenged Catholic schools in the region to pioneer in the teaching of Islam to Muslim schoolchildren.

Father Yosef Lalu, executive secretary of the Indonesian bishops' conference's Catechetical Commission, asked the participants to study Sundanese culture, their values, and their view of God and of salvation.

The Florinese priest also recommended the use of the Sunda dialect and the introduction of Sundanese folklore and songs in local Church evangelization.

Official 1990 statistics show that West Java's 35,384,000 people comprise 98.03 percent Muslims, 0.92 percent Protestants, 0.47 percent Catholics, 0.10 percent Hindus, 0.40 percent Buddhists and 0.08 percent followers of local beliefs.

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