This does not signify a change in Pope Francis’s own views of Islam. It only means that Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a French priest who lived among Muslims in Morocco and Algeria , where by his own example he hoped to promote their conversion to Christianity, has been willfully misunderstood by the Vatican, for de Foucauld was no admirer of Islam. If he were alive today in France he would be supporting Marine Le Pen.
The story is at the Church Militant:
Pope Francis is to canonize a French priest who warned of the resurgence of Islamic imperialism and the impossibility of integrating Muslims into French society unless the Church converted Muslims to Christianity.
Pope Francis apparently is unaware of Charles de Foucauld’s views on Muslims and Islam. They were nothing like what Pope Francis believes; de Foucauld took a very dim view of Islam, and regarded Muslims as a threat to the French whom they hoped one day to “subdue.”
If he did not express these views openly, that was because he was in North Africa living with Muslims. He did not proselytize, believing that he had to slowly win the trust of Muslims, to prepare the mental ground for others who would come after him and convert them. De Foucauld’s real views can be found in his Letters.
“In general, with some exceptions, as long as they are Muslim, they will not be French, they will wait more or less patiently for the day of the Mahdi [Islamic messiah], in which they will subdue France,” Blessed Charles de Foucauld warned in his 1916 letter to René Bazin, his future biographer.
“If, little by little, slowly, the Muslims of our colonial empire in northern Africa do not convert, there will be a nationalist movement similar to that of Turkey,” de Foucauld predicted, explaining that the Muslim “intellectual elite” will have “lost all Islamic faith” but will use Islam to “influence the masses,” and ordinary Muslims will remain “firmly Mohammedan, brought to hatred and contempt for the French by their religion.”
“In sentiments that would now be outlawed as Islamophobic, de Foucauld prophesied an Islamic political threat to Christian civilization, warning of the dangers of Muslims left untouched by the love of Christ,” a French-speaking member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a religious society inspired by de Foucauld, told Church Militant.
“The task of whether or not to treat de Foucauld as an Islamophile or an Islamophobe will define whether or not European culture succumbs to Islam or converts it,” the Normandy-based Catholic theologian observed.
However, shortly after the Vatican cleared de Foucauld’s canonization on May 27, Fr. Andrea Mandonico told Vatican News that the martyr should be hailed as a “prophet of interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Islam.”
Professor Mandonico teaches a course on Charles de Foucauld at the Gregorian University, which aims “to show how a fraternity between Christianity and Islam is possible … in the dialogue that does not impose itself, that does not ask for conversion, a dialogue in ‘universal brotherhood’ as … stated in the recent document on Human Fraternity,” signed between Pope Francis and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayyeb in Abu Dhabi Feb. 2019.
Charles de Foucauld was not engaged – despite Professor Mandonico’s claim – in “interreligious dialogue.” He did not believe it possible for there to be any true dialogue with Islam, so militantly hostile to Christianity. He was attempting to win by his self-effacing behavior the trust of individual Muslims, to reduce their Qur’an-inculcated hostility, and to prepare Muslim minds for conversion to Islam, which he knew would take time. He talked with the Muslims – Arabs and Tuaregs — among whom he lived, he offered himself as an unthreatening example of a devout Christian cleric, but that did not constitute “interreligious dialogue.”
La Croix praised the former cavalry officer as “a great figure of interreligious dialogue.” In an interview, Sr. Odette, a member of the Little Sisters of Jesus based in Paris, said: “At a time when there is so much talk of interreligious dialogue, he is a great figure of that dialogue through his apostolate of prayer, silence and friendship with his Muslim brothers and sisters.”
Another enthusiast, a Sister Odette, is apparent unaware of how De Foucauld saw his mission. He was not “a great figure…of interreligious dialogue” at all; he offered his own charitable and ascetic self, rather, as a way to win over Muslim hearts to recognize that not all Christians were the enemy. He could offer “friendship” to Muslims, but not renunciation of his own very clear Christian beliefs, which he did not dwell on, as they were regarded by Muslims with horror and hostility.
Writing in The Tablet, Christopher Lamb described the missionary to the Tuareg population of the Ahaggar region as a “model of dialogue and charity” who “showcased a ministry of presence.'”
“It is an evangelization method which is the opposite of proselytizing. Living in a Muslim country he did not seek to preach, or perform great acts of bravado but to live at the foot of the cross,” writes Lamb.
Christopher Lamb recognizes that De Foucauld’s intent was to “evangelize” in the most modest of ways, by offering himself as an example of a believing Christian, who never openly proselytized, and who proceeded very gradually to win Muslim affections. “Living in a Muslim country he did not seek to preach” — that was because that could cause him to be murdered. “Great acts of bravado” similarly refers to any too-obvious attempt, besides preaching, to win Muslim minds and hearts for Christianity; that too could have led to his death.
In The Tablet the liberal Catholic Christopher Lamb comments: “At a time when political strategists, and some inside the Church, wish to present a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and Christianity and call for the ‘Judeo-Christian’ west to be defended, de Foucauld offers another way.”
Lamb misconstrues De Foucauld’s views. The fact that he did not proselytize but sought another means to open Muslim hearts to Christ, does not mean he had a favorable view of Islam. In his letters, Charles de Foucauld was very clear about that “clash of civilizations” which Lamb claims he did not believe in. He saw the political threat of Islam to the Christian West. He understood the deep-seated immutable hostility of Muslims toward Christians, that he had learned about from living with Muslims themselves. He predicted the clash of civilizations in his letters, explaining that in the future the Muslim “intellectual elite” will have “lost all Islamic faith” but will still use Islam to “influence the masses,” and ordinary Muslims will remain “firmly Mohammedan, brought to hatred and contempt for the French by their religion.” De Foucauld prophesied “an Islamic political threat to Christian civilization, warning of the dangers of Muslims left untouched by the love of Christ.”