November 12 - Blair says role of religion is key challenge facing world

He continued: “We are, understandably, preoccupied with the threat posed to us by violent religious extremism.” But the issue was wider. Even where there was not extremism expressed in violence, “there can be extremism expressed in the idea that a person’s identity is to be found not merely in their religious faith, but in their faith as a means of excluding the other person who does not share it”.

Faith was problematic when it became “a way of denigrating those who do not share it as somehow lesser human beings. Faith is then a means of exclusion. God in this connection becomes not universal but partisan, faith not a means of reaching out in friendship but a means of creating or defining enemies.”

It seemed to Mr Blair we were moving into a period when interfaith action will come into its own. In that complex context Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate was “a powerful call . . . that resonates both ecumenically and with the deepest moral sentiments of the different world religions”.