Islamic leader postpones planned meeting with pope

Published: 2007-03-23

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi, one of Sunni Islam's leading clerics, has postponed his planned meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican spokesman said. Sheik Tantawi, head of al-Azhar University, a world-renowned center of Islamic scholarship in Cairo, Egypt, was scheduled to meet the pope March 22 at the Vatican. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the Vatican nuncio to Egypt, told Catholic News Service March 23 that Sheik Tantawi was unable to keep the March appointment, but he declined to speculate on the reason. "We possibly will start looking for a new date" for the visit, perhaps in May, the archbishop said. The Vatican did not share Sheik Tantawi's reason for postponing his trip, but Egyptian newspapers had been filled with criticism of the planned visit. Among those disapproving were Muslim clerics and politicians still angered about the pope's September speech in Germany, in which he quoted a 14th-century criticism of Islam.

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