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OCP News Service – 24/2/21

Vatican City: The Pontifical International Marian Academy (Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis/ PAMI) has begun promoting Mother Mary (Holy Theotokos) as a tool of reconciliation between Roman Catholicism and the Islamic world. The Marian Academy launched a webinar dialogue series on the 18th of February, 2021, titled “Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam” in partnership with the Grand Mosque of Rome and the Islamic Cultural Center in Italy.

Fr. Gian Matteo Roggio, Professor and a member of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette and the organizer of the dialogue series believe that Mary is “a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman,” and aims to promote the Theotokos as a model of a generous invitation between religious and multicultural worlds. Fr. Roggio called Mary (Holy Theotkos), as “a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman” in his recent article published in the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana. According to  him, the “figure of Mary responds to the genetic codes of three religious experiences: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. She is an authentic cross-cultural figure and can help understand the importance of shared and interdisciplinary knowledge as a factor of development”, reports Italian daily La Stampa.

VATICAN: MARY IS MUSLIM-CATHOLIC BRIDGE

Fr. Gian Matteo Roggio additionally serves as the Secretary of the Italian Interdisciplinary Mariological Association (Associazione Mariologica Interdisciplinare Italiana). In 2014, Pope Francis awarded the “Prize of the Pontifical Academies” to the Italian Interdisciplinary Mariological Association on the occasion of the twenty-year of the publication of their journal “Theotokos.”

Interestingly, Islamic critique and historian Raymond Ibrahim in his interview with Church Militant commented that “this series is yet another attempt to try to convince Catholics that Islam is somehow similar to their Faith when, in fact, Islam appropriates the names and sacred auras of biblical figures but then recasts them with completely different attributes — ones that reaffirm Islam as the ‘true’ faith.”

A detailed report is available on the portal of Lifesitenews.

Source:
OCP News Service