Pope names new inter-faith dialogue envoy

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed a French cardinal to head the pontifical council for dialogue between religions, restoring a post he abolished early last year, a Vatican statement said Monday. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, a native of Bordeaux in south-west France, will have particular responsibility for relations with Islam.
He will take up his job on September 1, succeeding another Frenchman Cardinal Paul Poupard, who combined the job with that of the presidency of the pontifical council for culture.
By appointing Tauran the pope restores to the council for interreligious dialogue its authority and reverses his February 2006 decision to merge its presidency with that of the council for culture.
That measure coincided with the departure of its then full-time head, the British archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, appointed papal nuncio to Egypt and envoy to the Arab League.
Fitzgerald was an expert on Islam and was widely appreciated by those with whom he had dealings. His removal was interpreted as a move to sideline him and a sign that Benedict XVI wanted to adopt a more demanding and reserved approach to the dialogue with the Muslim world embarked upon by his predecessor John Paul II.
But in September 2006 a speech by the pontiff in Regensburg in Germany provoked an uproar when he commented on Islam's relationship to violence and reason and the Vatican had to improvise its response. Leading Islamist figures around the world condemned the speech and in many countries there were street demonstrations. The pope had to express his "regrets" arguing he had been misunderstood.
In May Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See's secretary of state, said that the interreligious dialogue council would revert to being a distinct service of the Roman Curia, or church administration.
Tauran was made a cardinal in October 2004 and has a long diplomatic career behind him in the service of the Roman Catholic Church, of which he was the de facto foreign minister from 1990 to 2003. He has since been in charge of the archives of the Vatican library, one of the most high-prestige posts in the Curia.