{"id":25540,"date":"2016-05-23T22:36:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T22:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/pope-in-historic-talks-with-grand-imam-of-al\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T22:36:17","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T22:36:17","slug":"pope-in-historic-talks-with-grand-imam-of-al","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/pope-in-historic-talks-with-grand-imam-of-al\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope in historic talks with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Unexpected meeting between Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb followed easing of tensions during reign of Benedict.}<\/p>\n

Pope Francis has met the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican in a historic encounter that was sealed with a hugely symbolic hug and exchange of kisses.<\/p>\n

The first Vatican meeting on Monday between the leader of the world’s Catholics and the highest authority in Sunni Islam marks the culmination of a significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013.<\/p>\n

Our meeting is the message,” Francis said in a brief comment at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Vatican officials told a small pool of reporters covering the event.<\/p>\n

In a statement on the trip, Al-Azhar, an institution that also comprises a prestigious seat of learning, said Tayeb had accepted Francis’ invitation in order to “explore efforts to spread peace and co-existence”.<\/p>\n

The “very cordial” meeting lasted around 30 minutes, the Vatican said in a statement after the talks. In all, the imam spent just over an hour at St Peter’s.
\nConciliatory gestures<\/p>\n

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement that the pope and the imam had “mainly addressed the common challenges faced by the authorities and faithful of the major religions of the world”.<\/p>\n

At the meeting, the pope presented the imam with a copy of his recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, a letter to the faithful in which he urges the world to wake up to the threat posed by climate change and also calls for a rebalancing of the economic relationship between the industrialised and developing worlds.<\/p>\n

Tayeb decided to accept the invitation to Rome as a result of the numerous conciliatory gestures Francis has made to the Muslim world since being elected in early 2013.<\/p>\n

“If it were not for these good positions the meeting would not be happening,” the imam’s deputy, Abbas Shuman, told AFP on Sunday.
\nTies were badly soured when the now-retired Benedict made a September 2006 speech in which he was perceived to have linked Islam to violence, sparking deadly protests in several countries and reprisal attacks on Christians.<\/p>\n

After the tensions of the Benedict years, Francis moved quickly to set a new tone, sending a personal message to the Muslim world to mark the end of the first month of Ramadan of his pontificate.<\/p>\n

The Argentinian pontiff followed up by pushing various inter-faith initiatives and he was accompanied by both Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic studies professor Omar Abboud when he visited Jordan and Israel in 2014.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the gesture that clinched the deal was the most dramatic piece of political theatre of his papacy: his April visit to the refugee crisis island of Lesbos which concluded with him bringing three Syrian Muslim families back to the Vatican.<\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Unexpected meeting between Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb followed easing of tensions during reign of Benedict.} Pope Francis has met the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican in a historic encounter that was sealed with a hugely symbolic hug and exchange of kisses. The first Vatican meeting on Monday between the leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25540"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25540"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}