At a landmark meeting at the Vatican on Monday, Pope Francis and Egypt's top Muslim cleric Ahmad al-Tayyeb, agreed to oppose violence and terrorism and to strive to protect minority Christians in the Middle East , the Vatican said in a statement.
"The extremely cordial meeting lasted around 30 minutes. The two religious authorities underlined the great significance of this encounter in the context of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam," the Vatican statement said.
Tayyeb, chief imam of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque, was accompanied by Egypt's ambassador to the Holy See Hatem Seif Elnasra and a high-level delegation, according to the statement. The delegation included al-Azhar deputy chief Abbas Shoman, the head of its dialogue centre, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, and Tayyeb's advisor, Muhammad Abdessalam, the statement said.
After the papal audience, Tayyeb and his eight-member delegation had a separate meeting with the head of the Vatican's interfaith dialogue body, Jean-Louis Tauran, the statement added.
Francis gave Tayyeb a copy of his encyclical on the environment 'Praise Be - in Defence of Our Common Home' and a medallion showing an olive tree growing out of a split rock to symbolise peace, the Vatican said.
Tayyeb, considered to be one of Egypt's most moderate Sunni clerics, was recently ranked among the world's top ten most influential Muslims.
Relations between the Vatican and the Egyptian government cooled in January 2011 when Cairo recalled its envoy to the Holy See over what it called "interfering" remarks by Pope Benedict XVI urging the country to do more to protect its Coptic Christian minority.
Dialogue between the Vatican and the al-Azhar mosque - the highest seat of Sunni learning - has made progress since Francis succeeded Benedict as pontiff in March 2013, according to observers.
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