Pope Francis sends message of cooperation to promote peace to Egypt’s Awqaf Minister

CAIRO – 14 January 2021: Pope Francis sent a message of cooperation to promote the culture of peace to Egyptian Endowments (Awqaf) Minister Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa.

Gomaa expressed appreciation for the message and highlighted the importance of spreading the culture of international and humanitarian peace and consolidating co-existence among people.

He affirmed that the humanitarian peace is the goal of all divine religions, underscoring the need to jointly work on consolidating the culture of just and comprehensive peace and to renounce the cultures of violence, extremism and terrorism.

In November last year, Egypt’s Al Azhar Grand Imam, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayyeb, and Pope Francis made a phone call to discuss ways of eliminating violence, discrimination and hate, calling for spreading the principles of humanity fraternity.

Both religious figures have jointly published posts in English and Arabic on their social media accounts, affirming their continuous efforts of combating wrong ideologies that disseminate violence in the name of the religion.

"I was pleased to speak over the phone yesterday with my brother Pope Francis. We discussed a number of issues and our continued support for human fraternity as a means to eliminating violence, discrimination and hate, and that religions are not to be blamed for these indiscretions," Grand Imam posted on his Facebook page and Twitter account.

Pope Francis said: "a pleasure to speak by phone yesterday with my brother Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. We reaffirm our support to human fraternity as the solution to erase violence, discrimination and hatred in the name of religion. Religions have nothing to do with these."

In February 2019, Tayyeb and Pope Francis signed a Human Fraternity Document.