Pope Francis will visit Egypt for two days next month, the Vatican has announced.
The Holy See said the Pope was responding to invitations from President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s Catholic bishops, Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II and Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University.
The trip, on April 28-29, will be focused on Cairo, the capital city, the Vatican said.
It will be the Pope’s 18th trip abroad and the seventh to a Muslim-majority nation. He will be the second Pope to visit Egypt after Pope John Paul II went there in 2000.
The invitation came amid increasingly close relations between the Vatican and Al-Azhar, which is considered the most authoritative theological-academic institution of Sunni Islam. Al-Tayeb visited the Pope last May – it was the first time the grand imam of Al-Azhar had been received by the Pope in a private meeting at the Vatican.
The Pope later told reporters that in his 30-minute discussion with the grand imam, it was clear that “they are looking for peace, for encounter”.
“I do not think it is right to identify Islam with violence,” the Pope told reporters.
Francis also upheld the importance of strengthened cooperation between Catholics and Coptic Orthodox Christians. In the face of so many challenges, he said, “Copts and Catholics are called to offer a common response founded upon the Gospel”, and give a shared witness to the sanctity of human life, family life and creation.
Given the increased persecution against Christians, the Pope has told Coptic Pope Tawadros II, “Today more than ever we are united by the ecumenism of blood, which further encourages us on the path towards peace and reconciliation.”
Last month a thousand Christians fled Egypt’s North Sinai region after a series of deadly attacks by militants linked to ISIS. The group released a video saying Christians were their “favourite prey”.
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who worked as a window cleaner while secretly ministering to Catholics during the communist era, has died aged 84.
The Archbishop Emeritus of Prague was the first Eastern European president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences. He dedicated his term to rebuilding the Church and society after communism in the East, and defending Christian values in the face of secularism and materialism in the West.
In a telegram to Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague, Pope Francis recalled “with admiration” the late cardinal’s “tenacious fidelity to Christ despite the privation and persecution against the Church”.
The Pope also praised Cardinal Vlk’s fruitful ministry, which was driven by a desire to share the joy of the Gospel with everyone and promote “an authentic ecclesial renewal” that was always faithful to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Born on May 17, 1932, in Líšnice, Czechoslovakia, he studied history at Prague’s Charles University, earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Prague and trained as an archivist.
Ten years after he was ordained a priest in 1968, the communist regime revoked his licence to engage in priestly ministry. The regime persecuted clerics, imprisoning them and forcing them into menial jobs. He spent the next 10 years cleaning the windows of government buildings.
But he continued to minister in secret, like other barred priests, and maintained contacts with students and dissident groups.
“The will of God can be different in different moments of our life,” he said in 1991. “Sometimes it is his will that I wash the windows and other times to be archbishop.”
In the years following his return to open ministry as a priest in 1988, Cardinal Vlk and his homeland faced many changes, including massed anti-government protests.
Pope John Paul II appointed the then-57-year-old priest to be Bishop of České Budějovice in February 1990, two months after Czechoslovakia’s 40-year communist regime was overthrown by a popular and largely non-violent uprising.
Internally, the post-communist Church had to cope with a shortage of trained clergy and laity and a lack of churches and other buildings, because the communist government had confiscated Church property.
Cardinal Vlk was appointed Archbishop of Prague in 1991 and, in 1993, when Czechoslovakia became two countries – the Czech Republic and Slovakia – he became primate of the Czech Church.
St John Paul made him a cardinal in 1994.
Pope Francis has asked forgiveness for the “sins and failings of the Church and its members” during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and told Rwanda’s president that he hoped his apology would help the country heal.
After the Pope met President Paul Kagame, the Vatican issued a statement saying that the Church itself bore blame, as well as some Catholic priests and nuns who “succumbed to hatred and violence, betraying their own evangelical mission” by participating in the genocide.
Over 100 days, more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists. Many of the victims died at the hands of priests, clergymen and nuns, according to accounts by survivors. The government says many died in the churches where they had sought refuge.
During the 25-minute meeting in the Apostolic Palace, Francis “implored anew God’s forgiveness for the sins and failings of the Church and its members”, the Vatican said. He “expressed the desire that this humble recognition of the failings of that period, which unfortunately disfigured the face of the Church, may contribute to a ‘purification of memory’ and may promote, in hope and renewed trust, a future of peace”.
The Rwandan government has long pressurised the Church to apologise for its complicity in the genocide, but the Vatican and the local Church have been reluctant to do so. The Church said that those who committed crimes acted individually. In 1996 Pope John Paul II wrote in a letter to Rwandan bishops: “The Church in itself cannot be held responsible for the misdeeds of its members.” But four years later he made a general apology for Catholic sins and crimes.
Rwanda’s bishops last year apologised for “all the wrongs the Church committed” but the ministry of local government said the apology was inadequate.
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