Our Lady of Rabat

Our Lady of Rabat and Interreligious Dialogue

Rabat, capital of the Kingdom of Morocco

Rabat, the capital of the Alawi kingdom, is a city where history and modernity live together with a discreet elegance. In it, the Cathedral of St. Peter is the seat of the Archbishop of Rabat and the heart of the Catholic life of all Morocco. In March 2019, Pope Francis visited the city and spoke words that were left as the jalones on the path of dialogue between Islam and Christianity. Mary - Maryam in the Koran - is also in Rabat a meeting point between the two traditions of faith.

Rabat, capital del reino alauí

Rabat is a city that doesn't scream. Unlike Casablanca, which imposes its modernity on the basis of volume and movement, or Fez, which crashes with the weight of the centuries, Rabat has the tone of the capitals that have learned to rule without bragging. Its wide avenues, its gardens, its kasba of the Udaya on the estuary of the Bu Regreg River, its riverside that looks to the neighbouring city of Salé: everything in Rabat speaks of a city that has built itself with patience and with a certain sense of proportion.

Rabat's history dates back to ancient times - the Romans had a settlement there, Sala Colonia - but its foundation as a relevant Islamic city dates back to the 12th century, when the Sultan Almohad Yakub al-Mansur began the construction of a large mosque and the Hassan tower, a minaret of pharaonic dimensions that was to be the highest in the Islamic world but never finished. The Hassan Tower, with its 44 meters high on the explanade where the columns of the unfinished mosque rest, is today the most recognizable symbol of Rabat and one of Morocco's most photographed monuments.

Rabat became the capital of the kingdom under the French Protectorate, when General resident Lyautey decided to build the new administrative city outside the walls of the historical medina, thus preserving the traditional urban fabric. This decision to separate the new from the old, to build together with history without destroying it, is now considered a pioneering example of sensible colonial urbanism. Rabat's medina, along with the modern Protectorate district, Mohammed V's mausoleum and Hassan Tower, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2012.

The Catholic Church in Morocco: Discrete and faithful presence

The Catholic Church in Morocco is one of the minority religious communities of the Islamic world that has found, throughout history, a relatively stable modus vivendi with the political power of the country. It has not always been easy, and conditions change with governments and historical contexts, but Morocco has not historically been one of the most hostile countries to the Christian presence in the Dar al-Islam.

The Catholic Church in Morocco is organized around two dioceses: the Archdiocese of Rabat, which covers most of the country, and the Diocese of Tangier, which serves the north. Both are mission dioceses, with a very small number of faithful compared to the total population. The Catholics of Morocco are almost exclusively foreigners: diplomats, workers of international organizations, sub-Saharan, religious and religious migrants. The conversion of Moroccan citizens to Catholicism is virtually non-existent as a collective phenomenon, among other reasons because Moroccan law does not allow it and social pressure makes it extremely difficult.

In this context, the Church in Morocco has developed a vocation of service rather than expansion. Catholic schools - which in Morocco have a strong reputation for quality - admit students of all faiths and are mainly frequented by Muslim Moroccan families who value the academic level. The hospitals and social works of religious congregations serve the population without distinction of religion. This service and discreet presence is the way that the Church has found to be in Morocco in an authentic and respectful way.

The Cathedral of St. Peter and the churches of Rabat

The Cathedral of San Pedro de Rabat is a neo-Gothic building built during the French Protectorate. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Rabat and, as such, the highest Catholic temple in Morocco. Its architecture - twin towers, central roseton, main ship with its arches - recalls the cathedrals of North France, brought to Africa as a way to mark presence and create a reference space for the Catholic community of the capital.

The cathedral has been, over the years, the scene of significant moments in the life of the Church in Morocco: priestly ordinations, liturgical celebrations of the great feasts of the year, ecumenical and interreligious acts. Their relationship with the Moroccan authorities has generally been of mutual respect: the Moroccan State recognizes the right of foreigners to practice their faith and does not interfere in the inner life of non-Islamic religious communities.

Rabat also has other smaller churches, chapels of religious congregations and prayer places of different Protestant communities, which form the mosaic of the Christian presence in the capital. Each of these communities has its own history, its own liturgical traditions and its own sociological composition, but they all share the status of minorities who live their faith in a largely Islamic environment.

Pope Francis' historic visit in 2019

On March 30 and 31, 2019, Pope Francis visited Morocco on an apostolic journey that was, in many ways, a historic event. It was the second visit of a Pope to Morocco - the first was that of John Paul II in 1985 - and took place at a time of intense international debate on the relations between Islam and Christianity, and on the situation of migrants on the routes from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe through Morocco and the Mediterranean.

On the first day, Francis met with King Mohammed VI at the Royal Palace of Rabat. The king, who holds the title of Comendator of the Believers, is the constitutional guardian of the Islamic identity of Morocco and the guarantor of the religious freedom of non-Muslims in the country. The meeting was cordial and symbolic: two religious leaders of the two great traditions of Abramic faith, gathered in the capital of a kingdom that defines itself as Islamic but has always had an attitude of relative openness towards dialogue.

Francis also visited the Mohammed VI Institute for the Formation of Imans and Preachers, an institution created by the king to train Muslim religious leaders - Moroccans and other African countries - in a moderate Islam, based on the Moroccan Maliki tradition, which rejects extremism and promotes coexistence. The visit to this institution was a gesture of meaning: the Christian Pope publicly recognized the value of an Islamic initiative for peace and religious moderation.

En su discurso pronunciado en Rabat ante las autoridades del país y el cuerpo diplomático, Francisco insistió en algunos de sus temas recurrentes: el rechazo del fundamentalismo y de la instrumentalización política de la religión, la defensa de la dignidad de los migrantes, el valor del diálogo entre civilizaciones. Sus palabras sobre Marruecos como «tierra de encuentro y de diálogo» no eran una cortesía diplomática vacía, sino una descripción de una tradición histórica real, con sus luces y sus sombras, que el pontífice conocía y valoraba.

The following day, Francis presided over a mass at the main stadium of Rabat before the small Catholic community of Morocco - a few thousand faithful, mostly sub-Saharan migrants - and visited the children's home of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary, a work of welcoming children in vulnerable situations. With this gesture, the Pope stressed that the Church in Morocco does not live in its temples but is present in the social fabric through service to the poorest.

Marian devotion as a bridge between cultures

In the context of Rabat - a city where interreligious dialogue has an institutional and political dimension that goes beyond simple daily coexistence - Marian devotion acquires a particular meaning. The Virgin Mary is perhaps the point of the greatest symbolic convergence between Islam and Christianity.

El Corán menciona a María con una frecuencia y una profundidad que sorprende a muchos lectores occidentales no familiarizados con el texto sagrado islámico. La sura 19, titulada «Maryam», relata el anuncio del nacimiento de Jesús a María con un paralelismo notable con el Evangelio de Lucas: el ángel mensajero, la perplejidad de la joven ante el anuncio, la concepción virginal, el alumbramiento junto a la palmera. El Corán llama a María la más pura de las mujeres y afirma que fue elegida por Dios por encima de todas las criaturas femeninas.

This coranic veneration of Mary is not identical to Christian devotion - for Islam, Mary is the mother of an exceptional prophet, Isa, but not the Mother of God in the Christian theological sense - but creates a space of resonance that interreligious dialogue has been exploring with increasing interest. In Morocco, where the Islamic presence is so dense and so old, the Virgin can be a starting point for conversations that otherwise would be difficult.

The Catholic community of Rabat is fully aware of that potential. The initiatives of meeting between faithful of the two religions - days of prayer for peace, shared social service projects, academic meetings on the common figures of the two traditions - have in Rabat a privileged space that few cities of the Islamic world offer to the same extent.

Mary in the Quran: meeting point with Islam (Sura 19, Maryam)

One of the most surprising data for those who do not know the Quran is the importance that Mary - called Maryam in Arabic - has in the sacred text of Islam. Mary is the only woman mentioned by her own name throughout the Quran, and has the privilege of being the protagonist of an entire sura: Sura 19, which bears her name, Maryam.

Sura 19 narrates, with a remarkable literary beauty, the Annunciation and virginal birth of Jesus. The angel presents himself to Mary by announcing that God will grant him a son: she answers asking how it is possible, for no man has touched her. The angel answers that God believes what he wants: when he decides something, he says "I know" and it is. Mary gives birth to Jesus under a palm tree, and the newborn speaks from the crib to defend his mother's honor before the people.

The rosary as a prayer for peace in Morocco

The rosary is, in the parish community of Our Lady of Peace, much more than a private devotion: it is a community prayer that structures the spiritual life of the whole community and has a particular meaning in the Moroccan context. To pray the rosary in Rabat is to ask the Virgin to care for her children in a country whose vast majority pray five times a day looking to Mecca; it is to recognize that prayer does not need to be noisy to be powerful.

The mysteries of the rosary - joyful, luminous, painful and glorious - offer the faithful a complete meditation on the life of Jesus through the eyes of their mother. This contemplative dimension of the rosary is especially valuable in a context where the Church cannot make external noise: the inner noise of prayer, the meditative depth of the rosary, is the way in which the Catholics of Morocco build their spiritual life without spectacle.

Spiritual reflection on coexistence

Rabat teaches that the coexistence between Islam and Catholicism is not a utopian ideal but a possible reality, although it is not without tensions and limits. The small Catholic community living in the Moroccan capital knows it well: living together does not mean ignoring differences, pretending that beliefs are interchangeable or giving up one's own identity. It means, rather, recognizing the other in his alternity, respecting his sacred spaces as he respects yours, and looking for meeting points without forcing them where there are no.

The Virgin Mary - Our Lady of Peace, as she is invoked in one of the churches of Rabat - is in this context a symbol of peace that does not destroy the difference but assumes it and transcends it. His image does not appear in mosques, but his name is pronounced with respect in Koranic schools and devout Muslim homes. That discreet presence is, in its own way, a bridge.

May the Virgin of Rabat intercede for all who work in dialogue among religions, for those who serve the poorest without asking their faith, and for the small Catholic community that in the capital of the Alawi kingdom keeps alive the flame of the Christian faith.