Vatican City State and Catholic Church leader Pope Francesco will travel to Egypt next month to meet with religious and political leaders, including Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyib, the al-Azhar imam.

In the Vatican statement, it was announced that the Pope will be in Cairo on April 28-29. Pope Francesco will be the second Pope in official visit to Egypt after Giovanni Paolo, leader of the Catholic Church in 2000.

As al-Azhar is an important reference center for the Islamic world, the importance of the Pope visit to Egypt is attributed to the Vatican. Relations between the Vatican and al-Azhar during the previous Pope Ratzinger era have been strained following the "anti-Islamic" speech of the Pope in Regensburg in 2006.

In the period of Pope Francesco, the Vatican is said to be closely related with al-Azhar. Sheikh al-Tayyib, the imam of al-Azhar, who took a great reaction in Egypt due to being on the side of juntas, visited the Vatican in May last year and met with Pope Francesco, became the first al-Azhar imam who met a Pope in the Vatican. Pope Francesco had even said that the implementation of this opinion "constituted a message".

The Vatican and al-Azhar University held a seminar last month in Cairo on "fighting violence, radicalism and fanaticism in the name of religion”. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Inter-Religious Dialogue Council, represented the Vatican.

Tauran said that "education is very important" for the strengthening of dialectics and prevention of violence, and that al-Azhar could contribute to "change of mind" because it is a prestigious institution.

Cardinal Tauran also emphasized that the Pope's Egyptian tour, which was still in its planning stage at the time, was intended to "support the interfaith dialogue encouraged by al-Azhar". (Hamza Adiyaman - ILKHA)