Improving dialogue with Muslims a key focus of pope's Turkey trip
Francis can 'turn a new page' in relations, says scholar.
 |
| Pope Francis greets pilgrims during a weekly general audience last month at the Vatican. |
But one issue sure to be central to the trip — which will see the pontiff stop Friday in the political capital of Ankara before heading to the historic Christian center of Istanbul on Saturday and Sunday — is dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Of the 76 million people who live in Turkey, 97 percent identify with the Islamic faith.
After greeting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo?an in Ankara on Friday afternoon, Francis is to meet with the head of the country's Presidency of Religious Affairs, a government ministry known commonly as the Diyanet that is charged with providing and regulating religious services in Turkey.
One Turkish academic said the pope's visit could be a chance to repair what has effectively been eight years with little substantial Catholic-Muslim dialogue in the country — which from there could spark wider dialogues throughout the region.
Hakan Olgun, an associate professor of theology at Istanbul University, said Francis has an opportunity first of all to mend divisions created in Catholic-Muslim dialogue after Pope Benedict XVI's 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany.
In that speech, the pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who had criticized forced conversions of Christians to Islam, then generalized that the religion itself was "bad and inhuman”.
Benedict's speech "deeply hurt Muslims," and his visit later in 2006 to Turkey "was not enough to overcome the disappointment," said Olgun, a Muslim who has focused his research on the Protestant Reformation and conducted an interreligious dialogue project in 2006 with 30 other scholars at the Diyanet.
"Pope Francis can turn a new page in the way of dialogue," he said.
Source: National Catholic Reporter
No comments:
Post a Comment