VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Monday embraced the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim center of learning, in a sign that a five-year suspension of important Catholic-Muslim ties was over.
As Sheik Ahmed el-Tayyib arrived for his audience in the Apostolic Palace, Francis said that the fact that they were meeting at all was significant.
“The meeting is the message,” Francis told the imam.
The two men spoke privately for 25 minutes in the pope’s private library, bidding each other farewell with an embrace. El-Tayyib and his delegation then had talks with the Vatican cardinal in charge of interreligious dialogue.
The meeting comes five years after the Cairo-based Al-Azhar froze talks with the Vatican to protest comments by then-Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict had demanded greater protection for Christians in Egypt after a New Year’s bombing on a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria killed 21 people. Since then, attacks on Christians in the region have only increased but the Vatican and Al-Azhar have nevertheless relaunched ties, with a Vatican delegation visiting Cairo in February and extending the invitation for el-Tayyib to visit.
Francis gave him a copy of his environmental encyclical and a peace medal.
After the audience, el-Tayyib travels to Paris to open a Muslim-Catholic conference on East-West relations.
The Vatican’s relations with Islam hit several bumps during Benedict’s papacy. The subsequent suspension of talks with Al-Azhar institutionalized the bad blood.
El-Tayyib, however, sent a message of congratulations to Francis upon his 2013 election and said he hoped for renewed cooperation. Francis responded, and has made clear over the course of his three-year pontificate that relations with Islam are a top priority.
In a recent interview with the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, Francis took a conciliatory line toward Islam, saying “I sometimes dread the tone” when people refer to Europe’s “Christian” roots.
“It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam,” he said. But he added that Christianity, too, had its “triumphalist” undertones. “It is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”
He added that when looking to the causes of Islamic radicalism, it is better to “question ourselves about the way in an overly Western model of democracy has been exported.”
Pope embraces Al-Azhar imam in sign of renewed relations
Pope embraces Al-Azhar imam in sign of renewed relations
Protesters try to attack driver after truck speeds through anti-Iran demonstration in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with its side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.
The police department confirmed its officers were on the scene but didn’t immediately say if anyone was arrested.
Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
Several hundred people had gathered Sunday afternoon in the Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. The LA police department eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still at the scene, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran’s capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
