Bishop Eleganti condemns Vatican decision to provide Muslim prayer space

Bishop Marian Eleganti has publicly criticised the Vatican’s decision to provide a prayer carpet for Muslim scholars within the Vatican Apostolic Library.

In an interview with the publication LifeSiteNews, Bishop Eleganti said, “Islam is naturally expansive. As soon as a Muslim prays there, somehow in the minds of the faithful … I wouldn’t be surprised if it then becomes a kind of rooting and foothold, an outpost of the coming dominance that Islam naturally always strives for.”

He went on to assert that “Islam wants absolute dominance; it is inherently intolerant,” adding that “it has caused Christianity to disappear everywhere.”

The controversy emerged after the Library’s vice-prefect, Fr Giacomo Cardinali, confirmed that a small room laid with a carpet had been made available to Muslim scholars at their request. “Of course, some Muslim scholars have asked us for a room with a carpet for praying and we have given it to them,” Fr Cardinali told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The Library, one of the Church’s principal repositories of manuscripts, houses ancient Qur’ans alongside Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese works, and Fr Cardinali emphasised the institution’s self-understanding as a “universal library.”

Bishop Eleganti responded with sharp criticism, questioning the wisdom of locating Muslim prayer within the heart of Vatican scholarship. He noted the incongruity of permitting such a facility inside the Vatican while Christians would “never allow us to set up a chapel in Mecca, the holy site of Islam itself, where we could celebrate Holy Mass.”

He warned that the gesture portrays “a purely emotional religion: we are friendly, we are open, we are tolerant, we have a welcoming culture, we are open to dialogue, etc.” In his view, “it’s a kind of emotional religion that no longer takes the truth and difference seriously, because there is only unity in truth. Everything else is an illusion.”

Commentators have noted that the decision has sparked concern among Catholics who view it as symptomatic of religious indifferentism, a blurring of the Church’s identity, and even ideological surrender to Islam.

Bishop Eleganti described Islam as “a religion that we believe is not really inspired by God, but is deliberately conceived in an anti-Christian sense,” stressing that the Muslim denial of the Trinity strikes at the heart of Christian belief and that “Christians worldwide suffer persecution at the hands of Muslims.”

The Vatican Apostolic Library, located within Vatican City, traces its origins to Pope Nicholas V in 1451 and has since served as one of the world’s leading repositories of Christian and human knowledge. Its willingness to accommodate visiting scholars of all faiths reflects the institution’s continuing role as a centre of universal learning and cultural preservation.

However, the provision of a dedicated space for Muslim prayer within the Vatican walls is unprecedented and has raised questions about the extent to which institutional hospitality may require clear boundaries between interfaith goodwill and the defence of doctrinal difference.

Photo: Bishop Marian Eleganti (credit: Marian Eleganti)

‍