Pope Calls Talks With Iran Leader ‘Promising’

In a landmark encounter between Christian and Islamic leaders, Pope John Paul II met Thursday with Mohammad Khatami, the moderate cleric who heads Iran’s theocratic government, and said their 25-minute discussion made for “an important, promising day.”

Khatami, a Shiite Muslim, told the Roman Catholic pontiff that he hopes the two monotheistic faiths could join to inspire a more equitable world order in which Islamic nations are treated by the West as full partners.

“The hope is for the victory of monotheism, of ethics, of morals together with peace and reconciliation,” the Iranian president said during the public part of the audience. “May God protect you.”

As he entered the Vatican, about 50 Iranian dissidents in exile shouted, “Khatami terrorist!” and slipped into St. Peter’s Square, which had been vacated and cordoned off by some of the heaviest security ever for a visiting leader. Italian police surrounded the protesters and detained six of them.

The meeting in the papal study was the culmination of Khatami’s three-day state visit to Italy, the first trip by an Iranian leader to the West since his country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The papal audience was an endorsement of Khatami’s campaign for a “dialogue of civilizations” that would break Iran’s 20-year isolation.

A brief Vatican communique called it a warm encounter based on “a spirit of dialogue between Muslims and Christians” but said nothing of its substance.

The 78-year-old pope looked relaxed and pleased as he accepted his visitor’s gifts, which included six subtitled videocassettes of an Iranian television miniseries on the Romans’ persecution of early Christians in what is now Iran.

“I hope you will find it interesting,” said Khatami, who in turn was given a framed bronze relief depicting the apostles Peter and Paul.

At the end of the two leaders’ talks, conducted through interpreters, one of the three clerics accompanying Khatami asked John Paul in English, “May I do something?” Surprising everyone in the room, he kissed the pope on both cheeks.

Khatami, 56, wore a gray clerical robe, a black cloak and the black turban signifying that he descends from the prophet Muhammad, founder of the faith that rivals Catholicism for the world’s biggest flock. Each religion claims just over 1 billion faithful.

The tall Iranian cleric and his stooped, white-robed host have much in common. Both studied philosophy, and both preach about the need for economic justice, revival of spiritual values and tolerance among faiths.

Speaking to European scholars Wednesday night, Khatami said: “All the divine religions are not quintessentially different.”

Unlike Catholicism, Islam has no central structure.

John Paul has met with other influential Islamic leaders here and abroad, and last year he set up a Vatican office to promote Catholic-Muslim dialogue.

Vatican officials said Khatami’s visit had landmark significance for two reasons.

One is Iran’s influence in the Islamic world, enhanced by the fact that Khatami is now president of the 55-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The other reason is that Khatami’s opening to the West, launched after his election 22 months ago, is part of a bid to wrest power from hard-line conservative clerics whose policies have made Iran a pariah state and who still control the security forces, judiciary and broadcast media.

Many Iranians hope that the Vatican meeting “will lead to further dialogues with other nations, religions and civilizations,” the English-language Iran News said this week.

John Paul has spoken of wanting to help end Iran’s isolation, just as he has been working to end that of Cuba since his groundbreaking visit to Fidel Castro’s Communist-ruled island 14 months ago.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls denied speculation Thursday that Khatami and the pope talked about a possible papal visit to Iran this year.

Iran, like Cuba, faces long-standing U.S. sanctions. The Clinton administration accuses Iran of supporting terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction.

In an interview Wednesday with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, Khatami denied these charges and urged Washington to change its attitude “and make a fresh start.”

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, held a separate meeting with Khatami and expressed concerns about Iran’s human rights abuses and treatment of the country’s 13,000 Catholics and 107,000 other Christians, the Vatican said.

Fides, the news agency of the Vatican’s missionary arm, reports that Iranian Christians are free to worship inside their churches but that their activities are watched and they are barred from service in the government and armed forces.