Francis and Benedict: two popes, two divergent approaches to Islam

[rug]

Pope Francis, right, embraces Al-Azhar's Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb during a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, on April 28, 2017. (Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)

Christopher Lamb
Religion News Service | May. 3, 2017

ROME The global growth of Islam and in particular the rise of Islamic extremism have forced recent popes to set out, with increasing urgency, a strategy for engaging the religion.

As Pope Francis' brief trip to Egypt over the weekend demonstrated, the most recent pontiffs have come up with starkly different approaches — though it's not yet clear if one is better than the other, or if either will be effective.

When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI addressed the question of Islamic extremism he did so during a speech at a university in his Bavarian homeland where, as a priest and professor, Joseph Ratzinger had worked decades earlier.

That 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, was a theological master class on the relationship between faith and reason. But it also angered Muslims who object to Benedict citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who claimed that the Prophet Muhammad had only brought the world things that were "evil and inhuman."

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-and-benedict-two-popes-two-divergent-approaches-islam