VATICAN (CNS): Miguel Angel Cardinal Ayuso Guixot, who dedicated his priestly life and ministry to building bridges between Catholics and Muslims, died in Rome November 25 at the age of 72.
In a message of condolence to his relatives and his Comboni confreres, Pope Francis said the cardinal had “served the Gospel and the Church with exemplary dedication and gentleness of spirit.”
In every ministry he exercised, and especially as prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Ayuso “was always motivated by the desire to witness, with meekness and wisdom, to God’s love for humanity by working for fraternity among peoples and religions,” the pope said.
Joined by staff from the dicastery, delegations of Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and other religious groups attended the cardinal’s funeral on November 27 in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, celebrated the funeral Mass, and Pope Francis presided over the final commendation and valediction.
Reporting on the cardinal’s death, Vatican News noted that he was born 17 June 1952, in Seville, Spain. “And it was precisely the culture of the Andalusian city, where the tower of the cathedral—one of the largest churches in the world—had previously been the minaret of a large mosque, that strongly affected his sensibility.”
He was credited with helping restart talks in 2013 between the Vatican and Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s main theological centre
After initially studying law, he joined the Comboni Missionaries in 1973 and was ordained a priest in 1980. He studied in Rome at both the Pontifical Urbanian University and the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies before earning his doctorate in dogmatic theology from the University of Granada in 2000.
Sent to Cairo, Egypt, in 1982, he served as a parish priest at a church located near the Coptic Orthodox cathedral and not far from the famed Muslim University of Al-Azhar. After helping Sudanese Catholics present in the Egyptian capital as students, migrants or political refugees, he moved to Sudan despite the civil war. He remained there until 2002, directing the catechetical center of the Diocese of El-Obeid and teaching Islamic history in Khartoum.
Returning to Rome, he taught at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies and was named president of the institute in 2006.
In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Pope Francis named him a bishop in 2016.
He was credited with helping restart talks in 2013 between the Vatican and Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s main theological centre. The Muslim university suspended the talks in 2011 following a series of remarks made by Pope Benedict.
For many, the culmination of the dialogue was the signing in 2019 of the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, and Christian-Muslim understanding by Pope Francis and Egyptian Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar, during the pope’s visit to Abu Dhabi.
Pope Francis named Bishop Ayuso president of the office for interreligious dialogue in May 2019 and made him a cardinal later that year.
