Two high-profile European Catholic bishops have broken ranks with the Vatican’s policy of dialogue with Islam, instead advocating the conversion of Muslims as the only effective response to growing Islamism in Europe
The unconventional calls to evangelize Muslims and provocative warnings that Islamism constitutes a threat to Europe from Italian Bishop Antonio Suetta and Swiss Bishop Marian Eleganti—which run counter to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which in 1965 called for the Church to engage in dialogue with Muslims—are causing a stir in the wake of recent jihadi-style attacks in the two countries.
This is a light in the darkness.
In a May 20 interview with Italian newspaper Il Giornale, four days after the Italian-Moroccan Muslim Salim El Koudri mowed down seven pedestrians with his car in the Italian city of Modena, Eleganti described Islam as “an anti-Christian religion from the beginning” that “has led to the disappearance of Christianity everywhere or decimated it to near extinction.”
Eleganti Slams Fellow-Prelates for Sanitizing Islamist Violence
Openly dissenting with Archbishop of Modena-Nonantola, Erio Castellucci, who attributed the jihadi-style attack to El Koudri’s “serious psychological distress” and “profound isolation,” Eleganti asked, “Why don’t Christians commit such terrorist acts?”
“Such Good Samaritan declarations by the bishops are made to avoid jeopardizing, at least semantically, peaceful coexistence between religions,” Eleganti explained, noting that “they are a form of denial of reality.”
Eleganti warned that bishops were making “political statements in keeping with the spirit of the times” in an attempt “to immunize themselves from the harsh reality that will not spare us and will teach us a lesson as soon as Islam gains control and becomes the majority religion.”
“Efforts are regularly made to absolve Islam in general and Muslims in particular by framing the incident as a mental disorder. But it cannot be ruled out that both are at play: Islamic fanaticism, mental disorder, and personal frustrations,” Eleganti said, lamenting the reluctance to make any “connection to Islam or Islamism as a possible cause of such terrible acts.”
El Koudri’s hate mail from 2021, calling Italians “f*****g Christian bastards” and saying he would “burn Jesus Christ on the cross,” is “extremely significant details for understanding this man’s mindset,” the Swiss bishop noted. “[Pope] Benedict XVI was absolutely right when he diagnosed Islam as having a problem with violence. This is a clear fact.”
In an interview published on April 30, Eleganti told the Catholic media outlet Advaticanum that “Islam, not just so-called Islamism, is, by its very nature, an anti-Christian religion, in theory and in practice.” He warned that “Christianity has never fared well under Islamic rule” and “wherever Islam holds sway, Christianity is being decimated to the point of near extinction.”
Italian Bishop Challenges Moratorium on Missionary Outreach to Muslims
Meanwhile, a week after the Modena car-ramming attack, Bishop Suetta published a pastoral letter to his Diocese of Ventimiglia-San Remo on the feast of Pentecost, emphasizing the proclamation of the Gospel to Muslims in his diocese.
“This is the best and the most precious gift we can give them,” Suetta stressed in his letter titled “There is No Greater Love.” The prelate announced that he would roll out a “specific training program” to evangelize Muslims beginning in the missionary month of October.
Suetta explained that his diocese had seen “an increase in the presence of Muslim immigrants” in recent years. “If, in the past, the mission to non-Christians was primarily conducted in countries with a non-Christian majority, now the time has come to assume this responsibility at home, and for us, particularly towards Muslim immigrants,” he wrote.
Stressing that salvation can only be achieved through Jesus Christ, Suetta noted that “to neglect the proclamation of Jesus Christ would be to disregard his saving cross and his universal mediation” and “ultimately, it would be a betrayal of our mission as baptized people.”
Using the imagery of throwing a rope to someone being swept away by a river current, the prelate asked, “How many Muslims living among Christians will turn to them on the Day of Judgment, saying, ‘Why did you not throw me the rope? Why did you not make known to me the truth?”
Suetta told The New Daily Compass, an Italian Catholic media outlet, that a “liberal interpretation” of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate had given Catholics the false impression that the Church was expected to substitute interfaith dialogue for evangelism.
Global Expert on Muslim Converts Praises Bishop Suetta’s Proposals
“This is a light in the darkness. When I read Bishop Suetta’s letter, I felt I was looking back at John the Baptist proclaiming something new,” Duane Alexander Miller, professor of Islam at the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in Spain, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). “I hope Bishop Suetta will be like John the Baptist for the other bishops in Europe.”
Miller, an Anglican priest whose doctoral work at the University of Edinburgh established him a global authority on Muslim converts, highlighted three common elements in their stories. “It’s very simple,” he said. “First, I had a Christian friend who is praying for me. Second, somebody shared Scripture with me. Third, someone invited me to a Christian event.”
Suetta was representing the “very best” of the Catholic tradition, Miller observed. “Dialogue has its place, but the heart of the Christian mission is to proclaim the Gospel—that is, to invite people, and that includes Muslims to leave their old ways and turn to the new way of Christ.”
In April, Spain’s bishops backed the decision by the country’s left-wing government to grant residency to over half a million illegal immigrants—a move that security analysts expect will open Europe’s borders to at least 30,000 jihadi terrorists, FWI reported.
Duo Resists Vatican’s Pro-Islam Stance
Eleganti and Suetta’s positions on the threat of Islamism to Europe and the call to evangelize Muslims are at odds with the diffidence to missionary outreach to Muslims displayed by the late Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV.
On his return flight from Lebanon in December, Leo stressed coexistence with Islam, upheld Lebanon as a paradigm of “a land where Islam and Christianity are both respected, and asserted that there is a possibility to live together, to be friends.”
Asked what he would say to European Catholics who see Islam as a threat, Leo replied, “In Europe, fears are present but often generated by people who are against immigration and trying to keep out people who may be from another country, another religion, another race.”
Prelates like Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco of Algiers, Algeria, have urged Catholics to “get rid of the idea that we have to evangelize and bring people to our truth.”
“Thanks to prelates like Pope Francis and Archbishop Vesco, evangelization is off the table,” and as jihadis terrorize Christians, “Catholic leaders keep treating us to rose-colored depictions of Islam that bear no relation to reality,” Catholic Islamic scholar William Kilpatrick lamented. “Algeria happens to be a good example of subjugation by Islam.”
On his recent trip to Algeria, Leo rebuffed significant efforts by freedom of religion advocates seeking to focus his attention on the state-sanctioned Islamist persecution of Christians, the Middle East Forum Observer reported.
FWI contacted the Italian Episcopal Conference and multiple Islamist groups in Italy seeking responses to Suetta’s proposals for evangelizing Muslims, but received no reply.
