Conversion is not your mission, pope tells Catholics in Morocco
RABAT: Pope Francis told Morocco’s tiny Catholic community on Sunday their role in the predominantly Muslim country was not to covert their neighbours but live in brotherhood with all other faiths.
Francis has used his two- day trip to stress inter-faith dialogue. He has also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to spread a form of Islam that promotes interreligious dialogue and rejects violence in God’s name.
The country’s 23,000 Roman Catholics - most of them expatriate Europeans, mainly French, and sub- Saharan African migrants - make up less than one percent of the population of about 35 million.
“Christians are a small minority in this country. Yet, to my mind, this is not a problem, even though I realise that at times it can be difficult for some of you,” he said at a meeting with Catholic community leaders in Rabat’s cathedral.
Conservative Catholics have frequently criticised the pope’s position against organised or aggressive recruiting of potential converts.
“The Church grows not through proselytism but by attraction,” Francis said to applause.
“This means, dear friends, that our mission as baptized persons, priests and consecrated men and women, is not really determined by the number or size of spaces that we occupy, but rather by our capacity to generate change and to awaken wonder and compassion,” he said.
Moroccan authorities do not recognise Moroccan converts to Christianity, many of whom worship secretly in homes. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is banned - as it is in many Muslim countries - and proselytising is punishable by up to three years in prison.
“The problem is not when we are few in number, but when we are insignificant,” Francis said, adding that Catholics were called to be an integral part of interreligious dialogue in a world “torn apart by the policies of extremism and division”.
Francis’ appeal for interreligious dialogue was made more poignant on Sunday by the presence in Rabat cathedral of Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher, a 95-year- old French monk who survived what is known as the Tibhirine massacre in Algeria.