One of the first messages from foreign dignitaries received in London following the subway and bus bombings Thursday was from Pope Benedict XVI.
Addressed to the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, it said the pope deplored the terrorist attack as “anti-human and anti-Christian.”
A Vatican source said yesterday the pope’s message was consistent with his perception of militant Islam as a threat to Christian values and the Christian way of life, particularly in Europe.
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Benedict believes the Islamic terrorism is directed against Christianity, the source said.
His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, adopted a consistent line of conciliation toward Islam, visiting the Grand Mosque in Damascus, Syria, and encouraging dialogue between the Vatican and Muslims, some of them radicals.
Benedict has said little on the issue, except to extend a hand of friendship to all religions.
But if the past is anything to go by, Benedict, while no less charitable, is likely to take what could be called a firmer line toward Islamic fundamentalism.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrine chief before becoming pope, he was quite specific in his opposition to Turkey’s aspirations to join the European Union.
His view is that Turkey, an Islamic secular state, is not a good fit for the exclusively Christian union.
“Turkey has always represented a different continent, always in contrast to Europe,” he declared a year ago.
But his objections are not limited to geography. “Europe was founded not on geography, but on a common faith.”
Turkey’s case for EU membership has suffered a setback following the defeat of the French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution.
Opposition to Turkey’s admission, with the prospect of having to absorb its 70 million population, was a factor propelling the “no” vote toward its spectacular conclusion.
Even so, entry negotiations with Ankara are still expected to start in Brussels in October.
The pope has also spoken up for the rights of Muslim converts to Christianity, who live under a death sentence in many Muslim nations and Muslim communities in the West.
As Cardinal Ratzinger, the new pope played a major role in the Vatican’s unsuccessful bid to convince the drafters of the EU constitution to include a reference to Europe’s Christian roots in the preamble.
Constitution writers refused for fear of offending their large and increasingly influential Islamic communities.
Instead the constitution has an introduction tracing Europe’s culture to the age of reason.
“What offends Islam is the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes fundamentalism,” the cardinal declared.
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