Ending a five-year freeze in relations, Pope Francis is set to meet the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque, Ahmed el-Tayeb, in the Vatican on Monday. The al-Azhar mosque and university complex in Cairo, Egypt, is widely considered the most prestigious institution in the Sunni Muslim world.
Just to put things into perspective, Sunnis make up 80-90 percent of the world’s Islamic population, meaning there are roughly 1.3 to 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims. There are also 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, by far the world’s largest Christian denomination.
Not that el-Tayeb is the “Sunni pope,” but still – it’s not often that two religious leaders who each, in some sense, can claim north of a billion followers are in the same room.
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