The Vatican is taking its time to study the dialogue appeal from 138 Muslim scholars before giving an official reply, but the Catholic Church’s Islam and inter-faith experts seem to be lining up to comment on it. After Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. yesterday, Cardinal Angelo Scola has given his positive analysis of it today. Since taking his post in 2002 as Patriarch of Venice, a city that has had extensive trading links to the East for centuries, the former rector of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome has started up the Studium Generale Marcianum institute to study Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim culture. He also launched a unique biannual review named Oasis to foster Christian-Muslim understanding. It publishes reports and reviews in four separate bilingual editions — Italian and Arabic, French and Arabic, English and Arabic and English and Urdu.

In a front-page interview with the Milan daily Il Foglio (here in Italian), Scola said the call for dialogue took a realistic approach and the number and prominence of its signatories were impressive. Scola said he was also impressed “by the fact, probably without precedent, that the quotes concerning Jesus Christ were taken from the Gospels and not from the Koran. … It is a very encouraging signal, since it demonstrates that good will and dialogue can overcome prejudices. It is a spiritual reflection on the love of God.”

“The document, set in the perspective of the double love of God and neighbour, highlights a part of Muslim tradition that has been partially overshadowed by the growth of fundamentalism,” he said. “The Muslim leaders identify themselves with those ‘others’ of whom Jesus said: ‘those who are not against us are with us’.” Between the lines, he said, could also be read a condemnation of terrorism.

Scola said the text was of necessity limited in its scope. “We shouldn’t ask more of this document that it can give,” he said. “It is only the prelude to a theological dialogue that, in an atmosphere of great mutual esteem, proposes to investigate the contents of these two pillars (the love of the one God and the love of one’s neighbour) in the two religious traditions.”

Asked if Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech had triggered this reaction, the cardinal said: “Surely the pope’s speech set off some very interesting dynamics within Islam. As the signatories recognise, the interconnections between Christians and Muslims in today’s world make it impossible to put off taking a position regarding the problem of the coexistence of different faiths … The document indicates an important starting point for an authentic dialogue.”

For a journalist writing about the Vatican, whenever the pope names new cardinals, the eternal question returns — what’s the lead of the story? Who is the most important new member of the College of Cardinals , the elite “club” of men who advise the pope and who — if they are under 80 — can enter a conclave to elect his successor.

It’s less of a problem if you’re writing for a national newspaper or a specific audience. If your news organisation is American, you can lead off with the Americans. If it’s Italian, you shine the spotlight on the Italians. If you’re French, you glorify the French, and so it goes.

Writing for an international news organisation like Reuters has always posed some difficulties with such stories.

So, when Pope Benedict named 23 new cardinals on Wednesday, the quandary was there again. After the short urgent stories merely reporting that the cardinals had been named — a sort of numbers game — we decided to give the story a global flair, but at the same time shine light on the appointment of Emmanuel III Delly, an Iraqi who is Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans.

Although he has just turned 80 and so would not be able to enter a conclave, the honour given to Delly by raising him to the elite ranks of the Church appeared to be a gesture by the pope to support the Christian minority in Iraq and the Middle East. Benedict has often lamented the dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East and has supported efforts to improve their lot in a state of war. Delly has frequently warned that the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity, could soon be emptied of its Christians because so many were emigrating to escape the violence there.

Also interesting — and surprising — was the naming of Archbishop Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston in Texas. As some observers such as John Allen of the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter pointed out, the appointment seemed to be a recognition that the Catholic population in the United States has been shifting from the East to the Southwest, reflecting changes in immigration patterns and the growing Hispanic population.

The other American to get the red hat was Archbishop John Foley, one of the most well-known figures in Rome. Foley is perhaps one of the most media-friendly people in the Vatican. For many years he headed the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and was a godsend to many visiting journalists. Foley, a Philadelphian who once worked as a journalist himself, explained the “mysteries” of the Vatican to many who came to Rome for brief assignments, such as to cover the death of John Paul and Benedict’s own election in 2005. Foley’s name was mentioned often as a candidate for the red hat in the past but for some reason he was always passed over. He reacted to his nomination this way in an interview with Vatican Radio.

Something doesn’t seem to add up right here. Religion is a key factor in U.S. politics. Leading Republican contenders in the White House race are trooping to the Values Voter Summit in Washington this Friday and Saturday. The summit is hosted by the Family Research Council, an influential lobby group with strong evangelical ties. This group of (mostly) white evangelical Protestants, often referred to as the “religious right”, is a key base of support for the Republican Party. And they have yet to rally around any single Republican candidate, leaving the race on the right wide open.

But you wouldn’t know the Republican field is trying to win this crowd over if you glanced at the offiicial biographies posted on their campaign web sites. These mini-bios suggest, perhaps revealingly, that the Republican hopefuls are reluctant to draw attention to their religious affiliation — at least on their campaign web sites, the portal where voters often get aquainted with them.

Let’s start with Mitt Romney. His web site bio says he has served “extensively in his church…” But it never mentions that he is a Mormon and his church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. The closest it gets is mentioning that he got his B.A. at Brigham Young University (without saying this is a Mormon institution). That may be just as well because many white evangelical Protestants — the base Romney will address in Washington this week — view Mormonism as a heretical sect. Among U.S. white evangelicals who attend church at least once a week, 45 percent say the Mormon faith is not Christian, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center.

That Rudy Giuliani’s website fails to make any reference to his Roman Catholic faith is absolutely no surprise. There has been conservative talk of backing a third-party candidate if the former New York mayor — who has been playing down his earlier positions for abortion rights and gay rights — wins the Republican nomination. At least one Catholic bishop has said he should not receive communion. Rudy’s site has two heavy hints from his school days — Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Manhattan College — but avoids saying they’re Catholic. Hizzoner initially turned down an invite to address the FRC summit — but will be there for what will be a keenly watched session on Saturday morning.

Former Tennessee Senator and Hollywood actor Fred Thompson is mum about his current church affiliation. But his web site bio does mention that he attended the “First Street Church of Christ” when he was growing up. At least that’s clear.

John McCain’s approach is more complex. He’s been trying to rebuild the bridges to the religious right after dousing it with fuel and setting it ablaze during the 2000 campaign. Back then, he called Jerry Falwell “an agent of intolerance.” He recently started saying he was a Baptist, even though he had long identified himself as an Episcopalian. His own web site avoids mentioning religion at all (and also doesn’t say that he attended Episcopalian High School in Alexandria, Virginia, according to The Christian Century). And he has kicked up a storm on Baptist blogs by saying he is Baptist but hasn’t taken that church’s trademark full-immersion dunk. This won him the tag “semi-Baptist” from the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog .

Sam Brownback is often seen as a darling of the religious right, so why doesn’t he flaunt his church-going habits or spiritual affiliation on his campaign web site ? His bio quotes the New York Times as saying that he is “one of the most conservative, religious, fascinating … politicians in America today.” But which religion, please? Is the Kansas senator hesitant to advertise the fact that he is a former evangelical Protestant who converted to Catholicism? Might not go down too well at the VVS.

Only one significant contender from the Republican field, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, makes the kind of explicit reference to his faith that you might expect from someone planning to press the flesh at the Values Voter Summit. His web bio says: “A significant part of his adult life was spent as a pastor and denominational leader. He became the youngest president ever of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, the largest denomination in Arkansas.”

Is this religious transparency because he has nothing to hide from the religious right — or sees them as his best shot at glory?

We noted here on Monday that the unprecedented appeal by 138 Muslim scholars for a real Christian-Muslim dialogue put the focus on how the Vatican would react. The only comment from Rome so far has been cautiously positive, saying it was “very interesting” and “encouraging” but going no further. Now one of the Catholic Church’s top experts on Islam has given his analysis — and he’s impressed by what he sees.

Father Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. is an Egyptian who heads the Research and Documentation Centre for Arab Christianity (CEDRAC ) at Saint Joseph’s University in Beirut. A genial polyglot whose native language is Arabic, he is as familiar with the Koran as the Bible and has written extensively about both religions. He was one of two Jesuit professors who lectured about Islam to Pope Benedict and the pope’s former PhD students (the so-called Ratzinger- Schülerkreis) at a private meeting in 2005. He can be both critical and sympathetic in his analyses, so a positive assessment from him carries weight.

“There is a lot of good in the document sent to Benedict XVI and Christian leaders,” reads the start of his analysis just published by the Rome-based Catholic news service AsiaNews.it. He also points out what he calls “gaps and elements which provoke the need for deeper reflections.” Read the whole analysis here .

Building mosques has become a hot topic this year in several European countries. One of the issues is whether foreign funds, mostly coming in from Middle Eastern states without any official supervision, might be used secretly to build or finance mosques preaching radical Islam.

The French government has come up with an interesting way to handle this problem by creating a semi-official Foundation for Islamic Works. It is meant to take in donations from home or abroad and distribute them among the different organisations in the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). Its books would be open and inspected by the state, ensuring the whole procedure is transparent. This would not stop donors from contributing directly, but it should limit it, officials say.

The foundation was actually announced in March 2005 but political rivalries leading up to last May’s presidential election put it on hold for two years . The foundation’s board has now held its first meeting.

The political wrangling behind the foundation says a lot about the active role the French state plays in dealing with Islam in France. Could this be a model for other countries?

One of the fascinating aspects about reporting on religion is that the timeframes are far longer than most topics news agencies cover. Experts debate the fine points of little-known issues and progress can be slower than a snail’s pace. But it’s sometimes interesting to take a look at where they’re going.

A recent meeting of the International Mixed Commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in Ravenna, Italy ended with a short communique that said: “The theme of the next plenary session, the date and location of which are shortly to be decided, is: “The role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of the Church in the first millennium.” Pope Benedict also mentioned this last week in his audience but didn’t elaborate on it.

Two participants at the talks have now fleshed that out a bit. These talks between the Vatican and the Orthodox churches, which broke from Rome and rejected the primacy or authority of the pope in the Great Schism of 1054, are now slowly getting down to discussing the crux of the problem. If Catholics and Orthodox are to achieve some kind of unity, something Pope Benedict has put high on his agenda, they have to figure out the role the pope would play.

Bishop Gérard Daucourt, bishop of the diocese of Nanterre just outside Paris, told the French Catholic daily La Croix that “for the first time, the two churches agree on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. We now agree to recognise that two elements — collegiality and primacy — should exist at three levels of the Church — local, regional and universal. This is very important because, for the first time, the representatives of the Orthodox churches accept this form of primacy on a universal level that the Bishop of Rome could have … Until now, the Orthodox agreed to consider the Bishop of Rome as the primus inter pares (literally: first among equals). This time, it goes further, because we’re talking about authority.”

He said that if the Orthodox recognised some sort of papal authority, even a very weak one, the Vatican would have to show greater respect for collegiality (giving bishops a greater say in governing the Church) and “local Churches” (i.e. the different Orthodox churches).

Monsignor Eleuterio Fortino, under-secretary at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told Vatican Radio (here in Italian) that the experts had started to discuss “an issue that is essential in the dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, a difficult issue”. He explained: “We’re starting to study in detail the evolution of the role of the Bishop of Rome in the Church and how it was expressed in the first millennium.” Back then, all bishops recognised the pope but had considerable autonomy in their own regions.

In 1976, when he was still Father Joseph Ratzinger teaching theology in Regensburg, the present pope said in a speech about ecumenism that “what was possible during a whole millennium can not be impossible today … On the doctrine of the primacy, Rome must not require more from the East than what was formulated and lived out during the first millennium.”

As Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict was deeply involved in the 1999 Catholic-Lutheran agreement that resolved doctrinal disputes that led to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. That didn’t bring the two churches back together again in any organisational sense, but it resolved a long-standing dispute and made for better relations. It looks like Benedict now wants to reach back even further into history to improve relations with the Orthodox.

But not too quickly… Fortino told Vatican Radio the next full meeting of the commission would be “in two years, in the autumn of 2009.” And then they’ll have to study the papacy in the second millennium, he said.

Europeans are circling the wagons to keep creationism and intelligent design out of their schools. The latest development came on Monday when Sweden announced it wanted to tighten rules governing private religious schools to ensure they do not teach creationism. This is a new twist. Private schools across Europe usually have to follow some kind of national curriculum but can add other elements such as religious views. Creationism is certainly a religious view and a very large majority in Europe says ID is too.

“This is naturally brought about by the fact that different viewpoints are being discussed, for instance about the creation of the world - one based on science and one on religious views,” Swedish Education Minister Jan Bjorklund said while announcing the new policy. “Teaching in school must have a scientific basis.”

The Council of Europe made the headlines two weeks ago with a resolution firmly opposing these views and urging member countries to keep them out of their science classes. It defined ID as a form of creationism. That resolution entitled “The Dangers of Creationism in Education” was based on a long report with an interesting country-by-country list of cases where creationism has become an issue in Europe (see report pages 9-14). This was a non-binding resolution but it expressed the widespread mood of lawmakers who until recently thought creationism and ID were such simplistic U.S. religious views that they would never cross the Atlantic.

The issue has been around in Britain for a while now. Two weeks ago, a professor of science education in Britain made waves by suggesting that creationism should be discussed in science classes to better equip pupils with arguments to confront it.
“There are lots of pupils who come to science lessons from families where they very seriously believe the world was created in a few days 6,000 or 10,000 years ago,” said Michael Reiss, who is a professor at London’s Institute of Education, an Anglican priest and an evolutionary biologist. “I want to try and not ridicule those students but to help them understand the scientific way in which we can also understand the universe.”

Britain’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority issued new guidelines in January of this year saying that creationism and ID belonged in religion classes alongside evolution, not in science class. French education authorities and scientists have been warning against creationism and ID since a lavishly produced Muslim creationist book, Atlas of Creation by the secretive Turkish writer Harun Yahya , mysteriously began appearing in the mail free-of-charge at schools around the country.

Several large churches have also spoken out against putting a religious spin on science. In Germany, the Lutheran Church issued background material in July to confront “this Americanisation of European religious culture.” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and spiritual leaders of the world’s Anglicans, said last year that creationism was “a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories” and said it should not be taught in British schools.

In several statements and a book over the past year or so, Pope Benedict has clearly been more sympathetic to critics who say scientists go beyond their limits when they say Darwinism proves God does not exist. But he has also made clear the Roman Catholic Church does not support creationism and does not reject the scientific theory of evolution.

It’s fascinating to see this trans-Atlantic divide between Europe and the United States (where, it should be noted, the courts and many scientists also reject these views). Could this mean that creationism and ID are mostly American views that won’t catch on elsewhere?

If a novelist twists historical facts to fit a plot, we can accept it as poetic license. When Dan Brown has the dashing “symbologist” Robert Langdon race to the American Embassy in the wrong part of Paris, we might shrug and say it’s a mistake but The Da Vinci Code is a thriller anyway. But what should we say when a major theatre production mixes fact and fiction in the life of the late Pope John Paul II so much that it misrepresents history? Is that just a little white lie? Or maybe something more?

This has been on my mind since seeing “N’Ayez Pas Peur” (Be Not Afraid) a few days ago. This latest spectacular by the French impresario Robert Hossein is a theater version of the life of the Polish pope. It opened in late September in Paris and will run until early November. Spread out across the wide stage of the Palais des Sports, the play sweeps through the eventful life of Karol Wojtyla at a quick and entertaining pace. We see him as a forced labourer in Nazi-occupied Poland, a young priest out hiking with students, at his election as pope and then on his many journeys around the world.

Hossein is a veteran showman, with two shows on the life of Jesus and one each on Ben Hur and Charles de Gaulle to his credit. Some of the scenes are wonderful. There’s a re-enactment of the 1978 conclave where Hossein takes some liberties with the rituals. On the stage, some cardinals stand up and give speeches for Wojtyla, something that is strictly banned under Vatican rules. But Hossein makes up for it by using a huge reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel as the stage backdrop.

When in the next scene a cardinal announces from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica “Habemus papam!” (we have a pope!) and Wojtyla appears, the audience clapped and cheered as if they were actually there on Piazza San Pietro that day. The 1986 Assisi ecumenical summit, a real inter-faith spectacle presided over by the former actor John Paul himself, was re-enacted on a nearly empty and dark stage with about a dozen actors dressed as leaders of different faiths. The spotlight moved from one actor to the next as each one chanted a hymn or prayer from his faith.

It was when the story turned to the end of communism that it didn’t feel like poetic license anymore. In one short episode, a tense session in Warsaw between John Paul and Polish President General Wojciech Jaruzelski — this seemed to be a reference to his 1983 visit to Poland — slides seamlessly into a talk between Jaruzelski and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorby praises John Paul and says he’s going to visit him soon — but that visit only took place at the Vatican in 1989.

That was quite a stretch, but still OK — come on, I told myself, this is not a documentary. Then came a scene where the Berlin Wall opens up and who comes out marching through the breached border with the cheering East Germans but … JP2! And there to meet him is … Gorby! There were lots of teens in the audience — this play must be well advertised in the Catholic high schools — and they loved it. They’ve heard that John Paul helped tear down the Wall and that Gorby reformed the Soviet Union out of existence, but have no memory of watching it on CNN. Now they could see what it was like. Sort of…

This is where journalists can feel like real spoilsports. Those of us who covered these events remember that nothing of the sort happened at the Wall. John Paul and Gorbachev first met in December 1989 at the Vatican, not in Berlin. The pope didn’t even make it to the reunited city until 1996. Even if they had met in Berlin years after the Wall opened, it still would have been a hugly symbolic event. Just imagine it — the anti-communist pope and the last Soviet communist leader, meeting at the symbolic epicentre of the collapse of communism. It would have been fabulous … but it never happened. Will everybody in the audience know that? What if they leave thinking history happened like that? Should a showman make it up to that extent just to create a memorable but false scene?

Actually, I should have known from the start that this was coming. The story started out on an unbelievable note. The opening scene is a re-enactment of the 1981 assassination attempt on John Paul, staged with all the appropriate shock and noise and confusion. It is narrated from the side of the stage by an actor playing Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, the former Secretary of State or number two in the Vatican hierarchy. He was French, so he was probably picked because he would be familiar at least to older Catholics in the audience. The only problem was that Villot was himself already dead for two years by the time of the event he was narrating. He continued to narrate the story throughout the evening.

Is this getting too close to the story? That’s what we ask when a journalist gets so wrapped up in a story that he or she can’t see it from the outside anymore. I know this wasn’t a documentary, but I still think Hossein went too far in bending history to fit his show.

Imagine you are a Jewish historian of the Holocaust. You are being awarded one of Germany’s most prestigious prizes. The ceremony is solemn, the audience filled with the great and the good. The three Germans speaking before you give lofty speeches praising you and your life’s work for recording and explaining what they must never forget. What kind of speech should you deliver?

Saul Friedländer found just the right tone on Sunday when he accepted the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt. He gave a non-speech. To be more precise, he broke with the tradition of long-winded oration at such ceremonies and simply read Holocaust- related documents from the early 1940s. But these were not just any documents. Friedländer, whose German- speaking Jewish family fled from their hometown of Prague to France in 1939, read letters telling how his parents tried and failed to escape the Nazis, but managed to save him.

One was a letter in 1942 from his mother to a French neighbour who helped hide her son from the Nazis by having him baptised and enrolled in a rural Catholic school . “If we perish, then we will have that one great joy to know our beloved child has been saved.” she wrote. His father wrote her a final letter after he and his wife were arrested following a failed attempt to escape to Switzerland. “I am writing this to you from the train taking us to Germany,” he wrote, “please accept for the last time our never-ending thanks.” He handed it to a Quaker group that waited in train stations to help deported Jews and they mailed it.

Another letter was from his aunt in Prague to her mother exiled in Stockholm, telling her she was being sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. All three were eventually murdered in Auschwitz.

After the war, Friedländer reassumed his Jewish identity, changed his name from Paul to Saul and emigrated to Israel, where he taught history at Tel Aviv University. He is now a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The German Book Trade honoured him for his two-volume history Nazi Germany and the Jews.

In his non-speech, he said that his calm reading of his family’s desperate letters was not meant to be polemical. “I just want to express myself as seems fitting to me on this occasion,” he said. Some in the audience were in tears.

The German Book Trade website has the announcement of his award only in German. I’ll post the text and any English translation if they are provided later.

In the competitive world of agency news, most Reuters correspondents are more than happy to file a breaking story a few minutes ahead of the competition. Our financial reporters sometimes win a beat of a second or less – and get kudos from their editors because even that can make a difference to clients. When it comes to religion, though, the time frame can stretch out to eternity. Disputes that are centuries, even millennia old still influence things today.

Our veteran Vatican specialist Phil Pullella juggled these two approaches when he filed an exclusive story on a 700-year-old mystery several days before his rivals. Thanks to his excellent contacts there, Phil got the first look at a soon-to-be-published set of reproductions of documents from the trials against the legendary Knights Templar Christian military order from the era of the Crusades.

The lavish leather-cased set, which will cost 5,900 euros ($8,333) apiece, is not due to be presented to the public until October 25. Its faithfully reproduced documents show that the Templars, whose rise and fall have inspired writers for centuries right down to The Da Vinci Code, were absolved of the charges of heresy that led many members to be burned at the stake. Read the full story here.

“This set altogether weighs about 40 pounds,” Phil said. “My contact had to lug it around in a suitcase on wheels. The pages are reproduced just as they are in the Vatican Secret Archives, right down to stains on the pages and threads that sewed the parchments together.”