As Francis heads to Egypt, Benedict reiterates Regensburg

Official logo for Pope Francis' visit to Egypt
including the Islamic crescent moon

It can hardly be called a coincidence that as Pope Francis heads to Egypt, no doubt to promote "dialogue" with Islam, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has several days ago published a short letter to a Polish conference on his thought on Church-State relations, in which he echoes his thesis from his famous Regensburg address, that Islam and violence are inherently linked because of its detachment from reason itself.

As Francis prepares to repeat his view to persecuted Egyptian Christians that "Muslim terrorism does not exist," and again that it is not "right to identify Islam with violence," Benedict does not hesitate to identify by name "Islamist movements" as "radicalisms" which threaten "the future of our Continent", which "leads our time into an explosive situation, the consequences of which we experience every day."

Below you may find the complete letter in English translation.

Benedict XVI

Pope emeritus

Vatican City

15 April 2017

Distinguished Mr. President of the Republic of Poland!

Eminences and Excellencies!

Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen!

With great and profound emotion, gratitude and joy, I learned the news that, on the occasion of my 90th birthday, with the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland, high representatives of the state and ecclesial authorities of Poland will meet for a scientific conference on the theme: "The concept of the State in the perspective of the teaching of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI".

The chosen theme brings together state and ecclesial authorities to dialogue about an essential question for the future of our Continent. The clash between radically atheistic conceptions of the State and the emergence of a radically religious state in the Islamist movements, leads our time into an explosive situation, the consequences of which we experience every day. These radicalisms urgently demand that we develop a convincing conception of the State that sustains the clash with these challenges and can overcome them.

In the travail of the last half century, with Bishop-Witness Cardinal Wyszyński and with Pope Saint John Paul II, Poland has given humanity two great figures, who not only reflected on this question, but have brought to it their own suffering and lived experience, and thus they continue to point the way to the future.

With my cordial gratitude for the work that their Excellencies propose in this circumstance, I impart to them all my paternal blessing,

Benedict XVI​