NEW DELHI (UCAN) -- Catholic Church leaders have prayed with leaders of other faiths at a memorial service for people killed during recent anti-Christian violence in eastern India's Orissa state.

"This is a new gesture," Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi told UCA News after the Nov. 25 service, which the National Commission for Religious Harmony of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India organized in New Delhi. At the event, the leaders read prayers for peace from their respective holy books.

Among the 70 or so participants, including Baha'i, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Zoroastrians, were diplomats, bureaucrats and people prominent in education, law and industry.

Also attending were Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, apostolic nuncio to India, and the ambassadors of Cyprus, Germany, the Netherlands, Peru and Portugal.

Father M.D. Thomas, the commission's secretary and the event's organizer, told UCA News he invited the diplomats because international agencies have the right to act and intervene when "a government is seen not doing anything" to stop violence against religious minorities.

At least 60 people were killed in anti-Christian riots in Orissa that began on Aug. 24, the day after Maoists gunned down a Hindu religious leader.

The violence continued for seven weeks, despite promises by state and federal officials to check it. At least 50,000 people were displaced and normalcy still has not returned to the violence-hit areas.

Though Hindu fanatics accuse Christians of converting Hindus, Father Thomas said the violence has "unexpressed political, economic, ethnic and social" goals. According to the Missioners of St. Thomas priest, the concern of its perpetrators is not religion but their economic success and social prominence.

"All communities and countries should come together and pool resources" to work for peace, which "is our fundamental concern as human beings," he added.

The service included prayers for national unity and integrity, an especially challenging goal for a nation with many diverse customs and religions.

Anoop Bose, a Supreme Court lawyer who attended the event, told UCA News that religious leaders have a vital role in promoting peace. "They have to mold public opinion to save India's integrity," he said. In his view, the gathering of religious leaders would "give their communities right direction and the right dimensions," and save the country from its current problems.

B.K. Prem Prakash, a Hindu who works for religious harmony, told UCA News the program stressed love, compassion and justice as values that all religions promote. Peru's Ambassador Manuel Picasso, who lighted an oil lamp to open the service, told UCA News that his nation offered condolences to all victims of violence and to their families. "We condemn the violence," Picasso said, because "it is no solution to anything."

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