President Hassan Rouhani has congratulated Christians around the world on the occasion of the new Christian year which is just around the corner. “On the threshold of the new Christian year, I urge fraternity and amity among all free-thinking and peaceable people, and hope the year 2015 will be a year replete with prosperity and welfare for all people of the world,” the president said in a congratulatory message.
Rouhani also referred to the birth of Jesus Christ (PBUH) as “good tidings to mankind,” Press TV reported.
“Jesus came to give the good news that God is one, but does not belong to a single ethnic group or tribe. God is one, and is so for all humanity. Jesus came to say there is no superior, better ethnic group.”
He said, “We take pride in Iran, which is home to all Iranians, including Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians,” adding, “We Iranians have, as one of the first Muslim ethnicities and nations, always had good experience of coexistence with our fellow Christian countrymen.”
