Vatican City: Pope Francis on Monday embraced the grand imam of Al Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim centre of learning, in a sign that a five-year suspension of important Catholic-Muslim ties was over.
As Shaikh Ahmad Al Tayyeb 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. Al Tayyeb 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 of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria killed 21 people. Since then, the Vatican and Al Azhar have tried to relaunch ties, with a Vatican delegation visiting Cairo in February.
After the audience, Al Tayyeb travels to Paris to open a Muslim-Catholic conference on East-West relations.
