Pope meets with Muslim scholars

Benedict expressed hope that fundamental rights will be "protected for all people everywhere."

"The discrimination and violence which even today religious people experience throughout the world, and the often-violent persecutions to which they are subject, represent unacceptable and unjustifiable acts," the pope continued.

Muslim leaders echoed the pope’s hopes for better relations.

"We are here precisely with the hope of attaining peace between Christianity and Islam," Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, told the pope.

Catholic delegates included Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who heads the Vatican’s council on interreligious dialogue, retired Washington, D.C. archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

The Muslim group included Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan and Seyyed Damad, dean of the Department of Islamic Studies at Iran’s Academy of Sciences.