"Chrislam: Pope Francis and Sunni Islam's chief imam hold historic meeting at Vatican"

 

Geoffrey Grider

Pope Francis met with the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican on Monday. It was a historic meeting that was sealed with a highly symbolic hug and an exchange of kisses.

The first meeting at the Vatican between the leader of Catholics worldwide and Sunnis' highest authority marks the culmination of a process of significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013.

"Our meeting is a message". - said Francis in brief comments at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, according to Vatican officials briefed to a small group of reporters covering the event.

In a statement about the trip, Al-Azhar, an institution that also includes a prestigious academic center, said Tayeb accepted Francis' invitation to "make efforts to spread peace and coexistence."

The "very cordial" meeting lasted about 30 minutes, the Vatican reported after the talks ended. In all, the imam spent just a little over an hour in St. Peter's Basilica. Tayeb's decision to fly to Rome, unexpectedly announced last week, came after an easing of the severe tensions that marked the reign of Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Photo shows Pope Francis exchanging gifts with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, grand imam of Cairo's Al-Ahzar Mosque. Vatican City, May 23, 2016.

Those relations were severely damaged when the now-retired Benedict gave a speech in September 2006 whose words were seen as linking Islam to violence and which sparked deadly protests in several countries and retaliatory attacks against Christians.

Pope John Paul II met with the then Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo in 2000. - a year before the September 11 attacks changed relations between the West and the Islamic world.

Monday's visit was in fact a long-postponed bilateral meeting, while the Vatican said the two clerics "emphasized the great importance of this new meeting."

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement that the pope and the imam "mainly referred to the common challenges faced by the authorities and faithful of the world's major religions. These include joint action for world peace, the rejection of violence and terrorism, as well as the situation and protection of Christians in the context of conflict and terrorism in the Middle East."

Promoting "true Islam"

The pope handed the imam a copy of his recent encyclical "Laudato Si'," a letter to the faithful in which he urges the world to realize the threat posed by climate change and in which he also calls for a rebalancing of the economic relationship between the industrialized world and developing countries.

Tayeb decided to accept the invitation to Rome as a result of the many conciliatory gestures Francis has made toward the Muslim world since his election as pope in early 2013.

"If not for these good situations, the meeting would not have happened," - Imam MP Abbas Shuman told AFP on Sunday.

Shuman said Tayeb will take with him a message aimed at both the West and Muslims aimed at promoting "true Islam as well as straightening out misunderstandings created by extremist terrorist groups."

"It encourages countries not to treat their Muslim citizens as groups that pose a threat," Shuman said. "And it encourages Muslims in Western societies to mix with them ... there is a message for both sides."

After the tensions of the Benedict years, Francis quickly set a new tone by sending a personal message to the Muslim world, to mark the end of the first month of Ramadan in his pontificate.

The Argentine pope then set the stage for various interfaith initiatives in the company of both Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic Studies professor Omar Abboud when he visited Jordan and Israel in 2014.

But perhaps the gesture that proved decisive was the most dramatic piece of the political theater of his papacy: the pope's April visit to the immigration-crisis island of Lesbos that ended with the bringing of three Syrian Muslim families to the Vatican.

 

Translated Jacko. thank you in Jesus' name.