After controversial video, Vatican hosts serious discussion on Islam
As a Vatican delegation prepared in October to leave for war-torn Syria, the Catholic Church’s fraught relationship with Islam emerged as one of the main themes at a major gathering of the world’s bishops in Rome.
The debate was stirred by a leading cardinal who on October 13 showed a video titled Muslim Demographics, which purports to document Islam’s growing global influence. The video was shown during a Vatican-organized synod of bishops on new ways to evangelize in the modern world.
The accuracy of the seven-minute video’s data and projections have been sharply disputed and criticized by experts since its emergence in 2009, but the showing of the film sparked renewed soul-searching among Catholic leaders on the church’s stance toward the growth of Islam in the West and in Africa.
