Representatives of the Vatican and of the 138 Muslim scholars who wrote to Pope Benedict XVI last October proposing a new dialogue have established the Catholic-Muslim Forum.

The forum will sponsor a seminar in Rome Nov 4-6 with 24 scholars from each side, according to a statement released at the end of a March 4-5 planning meeting at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict will meet with the seminar participants in November, the statement said.

Accepting the central topic suggested by the 138 in their letter to the pope and other Christian leaders, the seminar planners have said the theme will be Love of God, Love of Neighbour.

The Nov 4 session will focus on the theological and spiritual foundations of Christian and Muslim teachings about the obligation to love God and one's neighbour.

The second day will focus on "human dignity and mutual respect" and the third day will be a conference open to the public, the statement said.

The Muslim participants in the planning meeting were: Abdal Hakim Murad Winter, director of Britain's Muslim Academic Trust; Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan; Ibrahim Kalin, director of the SETA Foundation in Ankara, Turkey, and a professor at Georgetown University in Washington; Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of the Islamic Religious Community of Italy and an imam in Milan; and Sohail Nakhooda, editor of Islamica Magazine in Jordan.

The Vatican participants were: Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue; Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, secretary of the council; Msgr Khaled Akasheh, head of the council's section for relations with Muslims; Comboni Father Miguel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies; and German Jesuit Father Christian W Troll, a visiting professor of Islam at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University.
(CNS)