The creation of a Muslim prayer room inside the Vatican has drawn the ire of a senior Vatican cardinal. Source: The Australian.
The prayer room was created last month at the request of Muslim scholars who use the library, which contains “incredibly old Korans” among its broad collection, according to the library’s vice-prefect, Fr Giacomo Cardinali.
“Some Muslim scholars have asked us for a room with a carpet for praying and we have given it to them,” he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
But German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller told US broadcaster Raymond Arroyo of EWTN that “permitting non-Catholic worship there amounts to self-relativisation”.
He did not know if Pope Leo or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were consulted. “Muslims may see it as a symbolic victory – a sign of their perceived superiority being acknowledged,’’ Cardinal Mueller said.
The debate has opened up amid a wider discussion in the church about the persecution of Christians across a swath of Africa, from Nigeria in the west to Mozambique in the east.
US President Donald Trump has warned he will deploy the US military with “guns-a-blazing” to “completely wipe out Islamic Terrorists” killing “CHERISHED Christians” in Nigeria.
African bishops, many of whom welcome Mr Trump’s approach, have described the situation as “genocide”, with Bishop Martin Adjoy Moumouni of N’Dali in Benin, which borders Nigeria, arguing “Nigerian jihadists have long been spreading terror in our diocese”.
But at a conference in Rome in October on religious freedom, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told journalists that the violence in Nigeria was “not a religious conflict but rather more a social one – for example, disputes between herders and farmers”.
The Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, a former papal ambassador to Australia, recently told the US that attacks on Christians had intensified in recent years.
“The data show that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide, and yet the international community seems to be turning a blind eye to their plight,” he said.
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Vatican no place for Muslim prayer room, says cardinal (By Tess Livingstone, The Australian)
