Esteem, and an honest difference.

Summary

The Second Vatican Council taught that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator”: “In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind”⁠.¹ “The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems”⁠.²

The take: esteem is not equivalence. The Council itself records the dividing truth: “Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet”⁠.² Dominus Iesus sets the frame for every dialogue: “Equality, which is a presupposition of inter-religious dialogue, refers to the equal personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content”⁠.³ Within that frame the popes have built friendship, insisted on religious freedom for Christians in Muslim lands, and rejected violence in God’s name⁠.^4,5

What the Council taught

Muslims “adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth”⁠.² They seek to submit to God “just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God”⁠.² They “also honor Mary, His virgin Mother,” await the day of judgment, and “worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting”⁠.² Of the centuries of conflict, the Council “urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding”⁠.²

The popes and Islam

Pope Leo XIV and Muslims

The Note A Journey of Hope, issued by three dicasteries in 2026 and approved by Pope Leo XIV, observes “the growing critical awareness of manifestations of Islamophobia, which fail to distinguish adequately between, on the one hand, cases of fundamentalism and violence and, on the other hand, the peaceful lives of other Muslim believers who integrate into and contribute to the countries that welcome them”⁠.¹⁸

The Abu Dhabi sentence

The 2019 Document on Human Fraternity says: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings”⁠.¹⁰ It draws from this a right to freedom of belief: “the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected”⁠.¹⁰

Two months later, raising the question why God allows many religions, Pope Francis answered with the older distinction of the theologians: “God wanted to allow this: Scolastica theologians used to refer to God’s voluntas permissiva”⁠.¹⁹ Catholic teaching on the point is fixed: the Church warns against “relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle)”⁠,³ and holds that “it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions”⁠.³

Dialogue and proclamation

Pope Francis taught that “Evangelization and interreligious dialogue, far from being opposed, mutually support and nourish one another”⁠.⁴ He wrote with admiration of “how Muslims both young and old, men and women, make time for daily prayer”⁠,⁴ and that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”⁠.⁴ With the Grand Imam he wrote that “religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism”⁠.²⁰

Each year the Holy See’s dicastery for interreligious dialogue sends Muslims a message for Ramadan. In 2026, when Ramadan fell during Lent, it told them: “know that the Catholic Church stands in solidarity with you”⁠.²¹