A remarkable detail from the Holy Father's pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This Saturday, Pope Benedict visited the King Hussein Mosque in Amman, Jordan. He was greeted there by H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, Personal Envoy and Special Advisor of H.M. King Abdullah II, Chairman of the Board of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought of Jordan. The Prince, who is also one of the original signatories of (and the addressee of the Pope's answer to) the Open Letter A Common Word Between Us and You, which 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals have directed to the Pope in response to his Regensburg lecture, praised the Holy Father's moral courage in staying true to his conscience irrespective of the fashions of the day. As an example of this, the Prince cited the liberalisation of the Mass according to the 1962 Missal in Benedict's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Here is the NLM translation of a piece by Italian news agency Apcom (the full speech should become available at this site; the link currently given there does not work at the moment):
Jordanian Prince Ghazi Bin Talal praises the "courage" of the Pope to take decisions against the stream such as the liberalisation of the Latin Mass.
The exponent of the Hashemite royal house has welcomed the Pope in front of the al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque in Amman.
Having thanked Benedict XVI for the "clarification" provided by the Vatican on the controversial 'lectio' of Regensburg and have pointed out that the figure of Muhammad is "completely and totally different" from the image given of it in Western historiography, the prince stressed that the pontificate of Ratzinger has been "marked by the moral courage to give voice and stay true to his own conscience, whatever the fashion of the day."
More specifically, Ghazi Bin Talal recalled that Benedict XVI has written "historical" papal encyclicals on love and hope, has promoted interreligious dialogue and that "he liberalised the traditional Latin Mass for those who adhere to it."
Thanks to the Papa Ratzinger blog.
UPDATE
An English translation of the entire, quite remarkable speech is now available at Sandro Magister's site.
