The Algiers visit was a compact manifesto of the postconciliar religion. Leo began the first papal visit in history to Algeria with a stop at the Great Mosque of Algiers, the third largest mosque in the world, and the official Vatican coverage presented the visit as a significant act of Muslim Christian dialogue in a majority Muslim country. Vatican News said he spent a moment in “silent reflection” there, while the official remarks page shows that he then interpreted the place in explicitly religious terms. 
A Catholic does not honor false worship as though it were simply another chamber in the same house of God. The older Catholic instinct was far sterner than modern churchmen pretend. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that to communicate in sacred things with schismatics, including assisting at divine offices in their temples, is “strictly forbidden.” Even the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, despite its later ambiguities, still says that witness to the unity of the Church “very generally forbids” common worship. That text was speaking about separated Christians. By obvious extension, the danger of scandal and indifferentism is not less when the setting is an Islamic sanctuary.
And Leo did far more than enter the building. He gave the act its theological interpretation. The official Vatican text has him thanking the rector for welcoming him into “a place that represents the space that is of God,” calling it “a divine, sacred space where so many people come to pray in order to find the presence of the Most High.” He then referred again to the mosque as “a place of prayer,” praised the educational center attached to it, and said that “through this place of prayer” and the search for truth, men can learn to live in harmony and build peace. Vatican News amplified the same line almost without embarrassment, describing the mosque as a “sacred space for prayer, dialogue, and the search for God.” That is religious validation delivered by the man presented to the world as head of the Catholic Church.
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