Pope names new president of Muslim dialogue office

VATICAN CITY, June 25 (Reuters) Pope Benedict today named Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran as head of the Vatican department that oversees dialogue with Islam.

The appointment completes a process of restoring prestige and power to the Vatican's Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, which Benedict controversially downgraded last year.

Cardinal Tauran, a Frenchman who previously served as the Vatican's foreign minister, will take up his post in September.

He is currently the Vatican's librarian and archivist.

Last month, in a surprising about-face, Benedict returned the Council to its status as a separate department after he relegated it in March 2006 by putting it under joint presidency with the Vatican's Culture Ministry and removing its president, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a Briton.

The department's return to its former status occurs as Catholic-Muslim dialogue is still suffering the negative effects of a speech by Benedict last September in Regensburg, Germany, in which he appeared to equate Islam with violence.

In that speech he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying Islam had only brought evil to the world and that it was spread by the sword, which was unreasonable and contrary to God's nature.

Some observers saw the Regensburg issue as a direct consequence of the Pope's downgrading of the Muslim dialogue office and the removal of Fitzgerald, since the Vatican no longer had a world-class expert on Islam to advise the Pope.

REUTERS SKB KP1855