Cardinal Ayuso, promoter of interreligious dialogue, dies at 72

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Spanish Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, who dedicated his priestly life and ministry to building bridges between Catholics and Muslims, died in Rome Nov. 25 at the age of 72.

A few hours before his death at Rome's Gemelli hospital, Pope Francis had asked an international group of Jains to pray for the dying cardinal, who had led the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue since 2019.

Reporting on the cardinal's death, Vatican News noted that he was born June 17, 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."

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 then-Father Ayuso 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 center. 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 a document promoting "human fraternity" 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.

His death leaves the College of Cardinals with 232 cardinals, 120 of whom are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave. Pope Francis is scheduled to create 21 new cardinals Dec. 7.