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Hopeful signs for dialogue
Vatican official upbeat after diplomatic visit

After a four-day visit to Teheran, the Vatican’s top foreign-policy official has indicated that the climate is ripe for dialogue between the Holy See and the Islamic government of Iran.

Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, spoke with officials of the Iranian government about “the participation of the Catholic Church and her institutions in the society of Iran.” The archbishop said that his visit had no particular object, other than “to get to know today’s Iran better, and to observe the conditions that face the Catholic Church there.” But he returned impressed with the prospects for “dialogue between civilizations and cultures,” saying that the Islamic government itself is committed to that process.

Archbishop Tauran traveled to Iran at the invitation of the country’s government and the Catholic bishops’ conference. He was following in the footsteps of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, who visited Teheran for a Christian-Muslim theological seminar in February. In speaking to reporters about Archbishop Tauran’s trip, Joaquin Navarro-Valls—the head of the Vatican press office—disclosed that the Vatican official had studied the possibility of a papal visit to Iran.

Diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Iranian government have remained intact for the past 20 years, despite the Islamic revolution that brought a new regime to power in Teheran in 1979. In March 1999, Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami met privately with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, in the first visit by a leader of the Islamic republic to the Holy See. At the time the Pope had described that meeting as both “important” and “promising.” There are only about 160,000 Christians in Iran, among a population of 65 million. The majority of those Christians are Orthodox; only 23,000 are Catholic.