Balancing Act for Pope in Egypt: Outreach to Muslims, and Speaking Out for Christians
Vatican released that Especially from a point of view of religious freedom, we must consider all citizens the same.
Samir said that So he simply passed to other things,
Francis will lend his support to Egypt’s roughly 250,000 Catholics
and insist on the protection of minority rights, including those of its nearly 10 million Coptic Christians, in a meeting Friday with Mr. Sisi, according to Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian-born Jesuit priest who has seen the pope’s prepared remarks.
It is perhaps no accident that he drew attention to his remarks about Christian martyrs last weekend by comparing the Greek refugee camp — where he
said he met the Muslim husband of the slain Christian woman — to a "concentration camp." His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was less adroit.
By JASON HOROWITZAPRIL 27, 2017
Pope Francis departed from his prepared remarks at a special prayer service honoring Christian martyrs in Rome last weekend to tell the
story of a Muslim man who watched Islamist terrorists cut the throat of his Christian wife because she refused to discard her crucifix.
Last June, Father Samir, the Egyptian priest and a leading Catholic scholar of Islam,
met with the pope to talk about Islam at the pope’s apartment in Vatican City.