Pope Francis holds talks with Sunni Islam leader

c. 2016 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis has welcomed an authoritative leader among Sunni Muslims to the Vatican in a step forward in relations between the two largest blocs in Christianity and Islam.

“The meeting is the message,” Francis said on Monday (May 23) upon greeting Ahmed el-Tayeb, a sheikh and grand imam of Al-Azhar, a mosque and university complex in Cairo that is viewed as the heart of Sunni Islam, which accounts for about 85 percent, or 1.3 billion, of the world's Muslims.