FRANCIS TO HOLD
UNPRECEDENTED MEETING WITH TOP SUNNI MUSLIM LEADER
PUBLISHED
on Friday, 20 May 2016
Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar, will be
received at the Vatican on Monday.
Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam
of Al-Azhar, will be received at the Vatican on Monday
Pope Francis will receive the
highest authority in Sunni Islam in an unprecedented meeting at the Vatican on
Monday.
The meeting between Sheikh Ahmed
al-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar, Cairo, and Pope Francis was revealed by
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi.
Fr Lombardi said: “This audience is
being prepared and has been scheduled for Monday. It will be a first.”
Al-Tayeb suspended dialogue with
the Holy See on behalf of Al-Azhar University in 2011. Benedict XVI had called
for the protection of Christian minorities following a bomb attack on a church
in Alexandria which was perceived as interfering in Egypt’s affairs.
But things have improved since
Francis’s election, with a representative of the Al-Azhar mosque, Mahmoud Azab,
participating in an inter-faith conference at the Vatican in March 2014.
“The dialogue was never cut, it was
just suspended,” Azab said at the time, adding that the idea was not “dialogue
for its own sake. There has to be a clear agenda.”
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