VATICAN CITY (Agencies)
Leading the world’s Catholics into Easter at a Vatican service on Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI baptized a Muslim-born convert who is one of Italy's most controversial journalists.
Magdi Allam, a 55-year-old Italian journalist of Egyptian origin, is an editorial writer and deputy publisher of the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
He was long described as a moderate Muslim before he decided to convert to Catholicism.
Allam, who has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, in 2006 organized a demonstration in Rome in support of Christians in the Muslim world.
"People who are baptized and believers are never strangers to each other," the pope said in his homily. "Continents, cultures, social structures and historical distances cannot separate us.
"But we meet each other, we know each other by the same Lord, the same faith, the same hope, and the same love that shapes us."
Allam’s conversion to Christianity was a well-kept secret, disclosed by the Vatican in a statement less than an hour before the Easter eve service started.
"For the Catholic Church, each person who asks to receive baptism after a deep personal search, a fully free choice and adequate preparation, has a right to receive it," it said.
Allam defended the pope in 2006 when the pontiff made a speech in Regensburg, Germany, that many Muslims perceived as depicting Islam as a violent faith.
Allam, who has been living in Italy for 35 years, has said he was never a very devout Muslim. Still, his conversion to Christianity came as a surprise.
"What amazes me is the high profile the Vatican has given this conversion," Yaha Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, told Reuters. |
