Asked by a reporter about Catholics in Europe believing that Islam is a threat to Christianity and whether they were right, Pope Leo XIV responded by saying they were often people who were against immigration and should be less fearful.
“All of the conversations that I had during my time both in Turkey and in Lebanon, including with many Muslims, were precisely concentrated on the topic of peace and respect of people of different religions,” Pope Leo stated, adding the understatement, “I know that as a matter of fact, that has not always been the case.”
“I know that in Europe, there are many times fears that are present, but oftentimes generated by people who are against immigration and trying to keep out people who may be from another country, another religion, another race,” he declared. “And in that sense, I would say that we all need to work together. One of the values of this trip is precisely to raise the world’s attention to the possibility that dialogue and friendship between Muslims and Christians is possible.”
The pope turned to Lebanon, which was a beautiful country in the 1960’s, but started to be torn apart with the entrance of the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Yasser Arafat.
As FDD has noted:
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded at a conference in East Jerusalem in 1964 under Jordanian sovereignty. The organization started recruiting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, training them, arming them, and launching attacks across the southern border with Israel, inviting Israeli reprisal. Lebanon’s Christian establishment was enraged, saw the Palestinian militias as a threat to the sovereignty of the Lebanese state, and sided with global capitalism against the PLO and the now-defunct Eastern Bloc. Christians thus became Lebanon’s Right.
Meanwhile, many Lebanese Muslims took the side of fellow Muslim Palestinians and their armed factions. These Lebanese connected with the world’s leftist organizations and governments and emerged as the country’s Left. By the time the Lebanese civil war ended in 1991, the Muslim Left had prevailed over the Christian Right.
“I think one of the great lessons that Lebanon can teach to the world is precisely showing a land where Islam, Christianity are both present and are respected and that there is a possibility to live together, to be friends, “ the pope pronounced. “Stories, testimony, witnesses that heard even in the past two days of people helping each other, Christians with Muslims — both of them had their villages destroyed, for example — of saying, we can come together and work together. I think that those are lessons that would be important also that we heard in Europe or North America that we should perhaps be a little less fearful and look for ways of promoting authentic dialogue and respect.”
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Pope Leo’s perspective would seem to be at odds with Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who wrote in Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ, “If you really understand Islam, you understand that the Church really should be afraid of it.”
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