Doha – Morocco’s rich Christian legacy from Roman antiquity, according to the Catholic News website Aleteia, blossomed into a diplomatic cornerstone with the Vatican. The North African country continues to protect religious minorities despite its overwhelming Muslim demography.
The old territory, which now includes modern Morocco, has Christian traces that deceive itself back almost two millennia. Volubilis, once the busy capital of the Roman Mauritania Tingitane, had early Christian communities that were forged by “merchants, soldiers, soldiers and officials of the Roman Empire”, Geopolitical Jean-Baptiste Noé disclosed to Aleteia.
“The Moroccan government has never persecuted Christians,” Noé illuminated in its analysis. This religious accommodation delimited Morocco from numerous Muslim majority states, in which Catholic adoration is confronted with hostility or obstacles.
This reception has produced impressive diplomatic bonds between Morocco and the Holy Chair. Relationships that were officially crystallized in 1976 and culminated in the water sheath of King Hassan II in April 1980 – the first by a Muslim head of state who worked with the newly installed Pope.
This diplomatic water catchment area has another landmark of the rendezvous than Pope John Paul II. dared After Casablanca in August 1985. The Pope spoke over 100,000 young Moroccan Muslims in the city stadium after crossing the streets in parallel vehicles.
During this unprecedented community, the Pope articulated “the importance of creation, God, respect for divine law and prayer” – topics that exceeded religious limits and at the same time demonstrated interreligious harmony in a time when the Islamic world dealt with the early tremors of extremism.
Morocco cleverly bypassed the tumult, which has besieged neighboring areas. “Although Morocco had an Islamist election victory in the 2010s, it always managed to keep the upheavals and tensions that other countries experience, such as Egypt or neighboring Algeria,” counted Noé.
This consistency has anchored Morocco’s unique position in the diplomatic vaticaries. Pope Francis Climb To the country in March 2019, which takes over King Mohammed VI and communicates with the local Catholic herd.
Months later he consecrated Archbishop Cristobal Romero from Rabat as a cardinal – an unprecedented award that Noé decrypted as “a sign that the dialogue with the Muslim world is one of the main points of the pontificate”.
The analyst rejected that this Morocco appointment gave “a new influence on church geography” and claims that “this region has taken a special place in the Catholic Church for two thousand years”.
The proof of Christian acceptance manifests itself physically across the country. The cathedral of the emergency dame of the acceptance in Tanger was built in 1961, five years after the independence of the country (1956).
The analyst describes this as “proof of the religious tolerance of the Sharifian Kingdom, in which the king is nevertheless commander of the believers”. Rabat’s Saint Peter’s Cathedral, who was inaugurated in 1921, shows a characteristic architectural style for Art Deco.
These buildings serve as a tactile certificate of Morocco’s persistent function as an interreligious line in a region that is often specified by Schisma.
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