(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Marian Eleganti has criticized the Vatican for installing a prayer carpet for Muslims in the Vatican Apostolic Library.
In an exclusive interview, Bishop Eleganti told LifeSiteNews that “Islam is naturally expansive.”
“As soon as a Muslim prays there, somehow in the minds of the faithful—I’m not entirely sure about this—but 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.”
“Islam wants absolute dominance; it is inherently intolerant,” he continued. “It has caused Christianity to disappear everywhere.”
“Conversely, one would never allow us to set up a chapel in Mecca, the holy site of Islam itself, where we could celebrate Holy Mass,” Eleganti noted.
Earlier this month, the Vatican Apostolic Library provided Muslims with a room featuring a prayer carpet.
“Of course, some Muslim scholars have asked us for a room with a carpet for praying and we have given it to them,” Giacomo Cardinali, vice prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, told La Repubblica.
The disclosure that Muslims can pray at the Vatican Apostolic Library has sparked an outcry from Catholic commentators, who have suggested that the permission signals religious indifferentism, ambivalence about its own Catholic identity, and ideological surrender to Islam.
READ: Vatican Library now has prayer carpet for Muslims
Bishop Eleganti said that Islam is “a religion that we believe is not really inspired by God, but is deliberately conceived in an anti-Christian sense.”
“It’s a total polemic against Jesus’ divine sonship and against his absolute significance as mediator between [man and] God the Father.”
He stressed that Islam “denies the Trinity” and “Christians worldwide suffer persecution at the hands of Muslims.”
“I think it just shows that even in the Vatican, the people who allow and support this have, in my opinion, a completely surreal, naive relationship with Islam and interfaith dialogue,” the Swiss bishop stated.
He said that with actions like these, the Vatican is portraying “a purely emotional religion: we are friendly, we are open, we are tolerant, we have a welcoming culture, we are open to dialogue, etc.”
“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.”
He criticized the Vatican for trying “to achieve unity with heterodox religions without asking the question of truth.”
He said that Muslims have “large mosques in Rome” and that there is no need for them to have a prayer room in the Vatican.
“Why do they have to perform their prayers in the Vatican? Nobody understands that, and I don’t think it’s good.”
