Vatican press conference for Ramadan a first

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

For those seeking signs of a new Vatican sensitivity to Muslim opinion, here’s one: Since 1967, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and its forerunner, the Secretariat for Non-Christians, has issued an annual message of greetings to Muslims for the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast, ‘Id al-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan. Not once in that span of almost 40 years has a Vatican press conference been organized to mark the occasion.

On Friday morning, however, the Vatican Press Office will probably have a full house, as the leadership of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue arrives to present this year’s Ramadan message to the global media.

The high-profile launch is yet another confirmation that the promise and the perils of Christian-Muslim relations is firmly on the map in post-Regensburg Rome.

The theme of the 2006 message is “Christians and Muslims: In confident dialogue aimed at solving together the challenges of our world.”

In general, the message is expected to call Christians and Muslims to collaborate in facing pressing global problems, including the "particularly painful scourge" of violence and terrorism, in part because the credibility of religions and religious leaders is at stake.

Because the work of preparing such a message, translating it, printing it and then distributing it to nuncios, bishops’ conferences, and so on, requires about six months lead time, the text was drafted well before the crisis in Christian-Muslim relations created by Pope Benedict’s Sept. 12 comments on Islam.

Inevitably, however, a couple of lines have been inserted acknowledging the heartache of recent weeks. The opening paragraph makes reference to Pope Benedict XVI’s meeting with Muslim ambassadors on Sept. 25 at the beginning of Ramadan.

The message then adds: “The particular circumstances that we have recently experienced together demonstrate clearly that, however arduous the path of authentic dialogue may be at times, it is more necessary than ever.”

From 1967 to 1972, the annual message for the end of Ramadan was signed by the official of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Non-Christians responsible for relations with Muslims, at the time a member of the Missionary Society of Africa named Fr. Joseph Cuoq. From 1973 forward, the message was signed by the president of the Secretariat, and, later, the president of the Pontifical Council.

The lone exception came in 1991, shortly after the First Gulf War, when Pope John Paul II decided to address the Ramadan message to Muslims in his own name and under his own signature, expressing his “sympathy and solidarity” for the suffering caused by the war and inviting common efforts towards peace.

Officials considered asking Benedict to sign this year’s message as a further gesture of reconciliation, but since he had already delivered Ramadan greetings to the Muslim ambassadors, it seemed a bit redundant.

Instead, the 2006 greeting is signed by the council’s president, Cardinal Paul Poupard. Perhaps reflecting the unusual circumstance that Poupard took over while still serving as President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, the message is also signed by the Secretary of the Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata. It’s the first time the message has carried two signatures.

In addition to presenting the Ramadan message, Friday’s press conference will also mark the release of a new collection of official texts on interreligious dialogue. The volume is titled Interreligious Dialogue in the Official Teaching of the Catholic Church from the Second Vatican Council to John Paul II.

Privately, officials of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue say they welcome the press conference, not merely to showcase the Ramadan message, but as a way of reminding the world that they’re still going strong.

When Benedict XVI announced in March that Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, former president of the council, had been appointed as papal nuncio in Egypt and that Poupard would take over, many interpreted the move as the first step towards the “abolition” or “suppression” of the council, or its eventual consolidation into the Council for Culture.

Since that time, however, the council has continued to function as a fully independent entity, and in many ways its officials are busier than ever. The presentation of this new collection of official texts is therefore seen, in part, as a way of signaling that the work of interreligious dialogue in the Vatican continues apace.

In 2003, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue published a collection of all the Ramadan messages issued up to that point under the title, Meeting in Friendship: Messages to Muslims for the End of Ramadan.