MAIL Online: The Vatican has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe.
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic Church's department for interfaith contacts, said religion was now talked and written about more than ever before in today's Europe.
'It's thanks to the Muslims,' he said in a speech printed in Friday's L'Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Vatican.
'Muslims, having become a significant minority in Europe, were the ones who demanded space for God in society.'
Vatican officials have long bemoaned the secularisation of Europe, where church attendance has dwindled dramatically in recent decades, and urged a return to its historically Christian roots.
But Tauran said no society had only one faith.
'We live in multicultural and multi-religious societies, that's obvious,' he told a meeting of Catholic theologians in Naples.
'There is no civilisation that is religiously pure.'
Tauran's positive speech on interfaith dialogue came after a remark by Pope Benedict prompted media speculation that the Vatican was losing interest in it.
Some Jewish leaders reacted with expressions of concern and the Vatican denied any change. >>> | November 28, 2008
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