Grand Imam of Azhar wishes Pope Francis speedy recovery

CAIRO – 23 February 2025: The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb wished Pope Francis of the vatican a speedy recovry.

“I pray to Allah to grant my dear brother, Pope Francis, a swift recovery and to bless him with good health and well-being so that he may continue his journey in serving humanity,” Sheikh Al-Tayeb said on his Facebook page on Sunday.

Pope Francis has been admitted to Rome's Gemelli hospital, where he is being treated from pneumonia, the Vatican News reported Holy See Press Office on February 22, 2025.

It added that Pope’s condition is very critcal and “the Pope is not out of danger” and the blood tests also showed “thrombocytopenia, associated with anemia.”

Last year in February, the Grand Imam praised Pope Francis as a man of humanity of a high caliber in a meeting on Thursday with a US religious dialogue delegation. Al-Tayeb said the convergence of visions with Pope Francis led us to create the Document on Human Fraternity, which took a full year of hard work to come out to the world in its current form.

Pope Francis and Al-Tayeb signed the Document of Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together in February 2019 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, with the aim of promoting coexistence among religions.

Since Pope Francis assumed the papacy of the Holy See, relations between Al-Azhar, a leading Sunni Islamic institute representing over 2 billion people worldwide, and the Vatican has improved and resumed after several years of tension. This restoration followed the accusations made by Al-Azhar against the late Pope Benedict XVI, who was criticized for “addressing Islam negatively.”

Additionale reporting by Amr Mohamed Kandil