Pope Meets Islamic Scholars from Iran and Catholic delegates

(May 1, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI met Wednesday with a group of Islamic scholars from Iran and the members of the Catholic delegation, following their talks at the sixth Colloquium in Rome from 28 to 30 April 2008 under the joint presidency of His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Louis TAURAN, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and His Excellency Dr. Mahdi MOSTAFAVI, President of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation. The pope received the sixteen member delegation after his weekly public audience and was pleased to see representatives of Catholicism and Islam considering faith and reason in their respective creeds. The members of the Conference briefed the Holy Father about the 3 day deliberations and its content. Six papers were read by three scholars from each side, during the Conference with the sub themes of Relation between faith and reason, Theology as inquiry into the rationality of faith, and Faith and reason confronted with violence. As an outcome of the conference, a joint communiqué was issued, where the members agreed upon the following: that faith and reason are both gifts of God; they do not contradict each other and basically are non violent, that Christians and Muslims should go beyond tolerance; to accepting differences while remaining aware of commonalities; to co-operate in order to promote genuine religiosity; to avoid generalization when speaking of religions and to have a holistic vision. The talks in Rome this week were the sixth in a series of meetings between the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization in Tehran. It was decided to hold the next meeting in Tehran within the next two years.