Pope hopes to mend ties with Muslims

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis hopes to mend ties with Muslims on his trip to Egypt on Friday, but faces criticism from church conservatives for meeting Islamic religious leaders after a spate of deadly attacks against Christians.

In a video message to the people of Egypt yesterday, Francis said the world had been “torn by blind violence, which has also afflicted the heart of your dear land” and said he hoped his trip could help peace and inter-religious dialogue.

Security is a primary concern less than three weeks after 45 people were killed in attacks on Coptic Christian churches in Alexandria and Tanta, claimed by Islamic State (IS), on Palm Sunday.

But Francis has insisted on using an ordinary car during his 27 hours in Cairo. Francis will meet President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the world’s most influential centre of Sunni Islamic learning and Pope Tawadros II, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who barely escaped the Alexandria bombing.

Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency after the attacks.

A main reason for the trip is to try to strengthen relations with the 1 000-year-old Azhar centre that were cut by the Muslim side in 2011 over what it said were repeated insults of Islam by Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict.

Ties with the centre were restored last year after Tayeb visited the Vatican. Tayeb, one of the most moderate senior clerics in Egypt, has condemned IS and its practice of declaring others as apostates and infidels as a pretext for waging violent jihad. Francis is convinced that Christian-Muslim dialogue is more important now than ever.

Meanwhile, the Cairo Criminal Court has sentenced 20 people to death for their involvement in violent clashes in the Kerdasa suburb of Cairo in August 2013. Fifty militants stormed the Kerdasa police station, killing 14 officers. The storming of the police station was in response to an attack by Egyptian security forces on two protest camps in Cairo, in which hundreds of supporters of ousted Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi were killed.