Pope Francis Explains Why He Won’t Identify Islam With Terrorism

His own experience in interreligious dialogue had shown him that Muslims seek “peace and encounter”, he said.

Pope Francis says it is wrong to equate violence with Islam, adding that “I do not believe that it is true or right that Islam is terrorist”.

The relationship had begun to deteriorate in 2006, when Francis’s predecessor made comments that drew from sources who had argued Islam is inherently irrational and can lead to violence. “It is not right and it is not true”.

Pope Francis waves during a press conference on the plane after his visit to Krakow, Poland for the World Youth Days, on July 31, 2016.

Pope Francis was responding to a question about an ISIS-linked attack on a church last week in which knife-wielding attackers slit the throat of a priest. “Every day in the newspapers I see violence in Italy, someone kills his girlfriend, another kills his mother-in-law, and these are baptised Catholics”. “If I speak of Islamic violence, I also have to speak of Catholic violence”, the pope continued.

“In Islam, not all are violent, not all the Catholics are violent”.

Some survivors have even said if Cardinal Pell refuses to return, they will call for buildings named in his honour at the Australian Catholic University and St Patrick’s College to be renamed. “Not all Muslims are violent”, Francis insisted.

Talking to newsmen on his way back to Rome after a trip to Poland, the Pope went on to say that almost every religion has a small group of fundamentalists and Christians also have such factions.

Francis’ five-day trip to Poland has taken place in the shadow of the Polish pontiff, who has cult-like status in Poland for his role in inspiring his native country to stand up to communist rule in the 1980s.

He points to something else as the cause of terrorist attacks.

He added that every religion has its “little group of fundamentalists”.

“That is the first form of terrorism”.

“When the glory of creation and a man and woman has been thrown away and money has been replaced as its center, this is a terrorism against all of humanity”. “Let’s talk about that”, he said.

Instead, the Pope said, that those who choose to enter fundamentalists groups, such as the ISIS, do so because “they have been left empty” of ideals, work and values.