Cardinal 'sympathetic to Islam'

By Desmond O'Grady CARDINAL Leon Duval of Algiers, the most senior churchman to visit the American hostages in Teheran over Christmas, said last week that he did not know why the Ayatollah Khomeini had invited him.
But in fact he was not an unexpected choice.
With Khomeini publicly critical of "Mr Pope", he could hardly invite Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli, head of the Vatican's secretariat for non-Christian religions, who has taken particular care of relations with the Muslim world.
But Cardinal Duval has long shown his sympathy for Islam and, more generally, for Third World aspirations. Muslims are among the Cardinal's best friends. At the time of Algeria's war of independence from France, French-born Duval sided with the Algerians. He denounced the French use of torture and said there could be no peace until Algeria was Independent.
Born in 1903 in Annecy in the French Alps, one of seven children of a farmer, he arrived in Algeria, as Bishop of Constantine, in 1946. He became Bishop of Algiers, the capital in 1954, when hostilities broke out.
When Algeria finally achieved independence in 1962, he took out Algerian citizenship and was accepted by the new nation which, but for Duval's stand, could have identified the church with the former colonial regime.
Last year Cardinal Duval predicted that the third world countries would "unleash blind violence" unless there was greater spiritual awareness of their viewpoint. The awareness was necessary before economic redistribution could take place.
The Catholic Social Secretariat of Algerians was the first organisation to talk of the right to development, now universally accepted, he said.
It has conducted studies on development projects for Algeria, in which the Church collaborates, and on greater international economic justice. The Church in Algeria remains tiny with only 70,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Algiers out of five million inhabitants.
Most Catholics are Europeans engaged on technical or cultural collaboration projects, "We are there as witness to our faith" Cardinal Duval said.
"The result is increasing spiritual communion, friendship and a mutual effort to grow closer,"