Posted on 12/02/2025 2:46:00 PM PST by ebb tide
Pope Leo XIV made his first official papal visit to Turkey last week, where he encouraged the small Catholic community to find strength in Christ. He also recited the original Creed promulgated by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325—in an effort to bolster unity with representatives from the Apostolic Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, and Chaldean Churches, which separated from Rome in 451, and the Church of Constantinople, which broke away in 1054 and once more in 1484.
The pontiff also went to visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where, at the behest of his guide the imam Askin Musa Tunca, he was invited to pray saying: “This is the house of Allah—it’s not my house; it’s not your house.” To which Leo responded: “No, I’ll just look around.”
Unlike his predecessors Benedict XVI and Francis, the reigning pontiff showed no condescension toward the religion of the Koran, regardless of the controversy he anticipated would follow. And, indeed, almost immediately the Vatican Press Office tried to do some damage control by stating that the Holy Father remained “in silence, in a spirit of recollection and listening, with profound respect for the place and the faith of those gathered there in prayer.”
The Roman pontiff made it clear that—notwithstanding his meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who in 2020 turned the 1,500-year-old church of Hagia Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian I, into a mosque—his visit was a pastoral and an ecumenical one. In other words, he was not there to appease a religion that, since its inception 1,400 years ago, has killed Christians and other non-Muslims alike, conquering and stripping their lands.
Unlike the left-wing circles within the Catholic Church that saw the pope’s refusal to pray inside the mosque as scandalous, it was met favorably by others as “a traditional visit of sacred respect without confusion, bargaining, or compromise,” Vice President for the Institute for Freedom of Faith and Security in Europe, Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, said. He further stated that the Islamic religious community is not scandalized because
he offers his prayers in his own places, he respects a different place of prayer. It is not a visit to just any building, but even with this gesture, I have the impression he wants to teach everyone respect in general but also respect in particular: everything in its place.
This past October was the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions—Nostra Ætate. Promulgated by Pope Paul VI, it was to serve as the blueprint for interreligious dialogue with Muslims and other non-baptized peoples—distinct from ecumenical dialogue, which is an outreach to other Christian churches and ecclesiastical communities. “In [the Church’s] task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations,” the document begins, “she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.”
For this reason, Fr. Paulin Batairwa Kubuya, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, said in October:
Sixty years ago, seeds were planted, and today this crowded square shows that the tree of dialogue between different religions has grown, its branches are lush. But it must be continually nourished, because there is still a long way to go.
Yet there is an artifice to the interreligious dialogue in that there can be some sort of congruence with a religion that refuses to call God “Father” and simultaneously acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God and not just an inferior prophet to Muhammad, as Muslims hold. Islamic teaching sustains the principle of tawhid—that is, a literal and strict unity of God, which refutes the divinity of Jesus Christ and, thereby, the Christian profession on the fullness of who God is: the Holy Trinity (Father, Son [Jesus], and Holy Spirit):
They [Christians] have certainly blasphemed who say, “Allah [God] is the Messiah, the son of Mary,” while the Messiah has said, “O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord:” for there is no God except one God Allah. They have certainly blasphemed who say, “Allah is the third of three.” And there is no god except one God. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment. (Surah 5:72-73)
I myself do not have a single problem, and nor should any Catholic, in having interreligious dialogues and encounters if they are geared to drawing Muslims (and other non-Christians) to embracing the fullness of who God is as taught by the Catholic Church which He Himself founded (cf. Matthew 16:18-19). Yet what we have had for the last 60 years has been a political dynamic that, by its very nature, is incompatible with the Gospel teaching of Jesus Christ.
From a sociopolitical perspective, there can be a meeting of minds with Muslims to defend the institution of the family, since they collectively are against same-sex unions and every other type of LGBTQ+ agenda. But then it would no longer be “interreligious” dialogue. It would be beneficial if the Holy See reevaluates this endeavor, and not just for our sake. Otherwise, they will continue to be, as Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf, Research Fellow at the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, argues, “one-time meetings or a photo opportunity, or what I call ‘goody-goody dialogue,’ where you just talk about the good in one’s own religion and the good in other religions.”
Ping
That's so good to hear! Thanks for posting, ebb tide.
It makes me wonder how much of Leo 14's actions and words are right, but we're lied to that he was promoting leftism. I hope that's usually the case.
As an evangelical Protestant, I see more in line with evangelical Catholics than I have with hedonism and leftist promoters in either Catholic or Protestant leadership.
It’s nice of you to talk (down) to other wingnuts and share your thoughts. Thank you.
Doing evil in God’s name is one of the worst sins yet Islam does that routinely. I’m glad this Pope didn’t pander to them by praying in their Mosque .
“the Vatican Press Office tried to do some damage control by stating that the Holy Father remained “in silence, in a spirit of recollection and listening, with profound respect for the place and the faith of those gathered there in prayer.”
He should have felt disgust being in a mosque.
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. (Acts 17:16-17)
Thus I often contend with elitist "one true church" cultic promoters here, whether Catholic or other, by the grace of God.
To which Leo responded: “No, I’ll just look around.” I hope he left them a Christmas ham.
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