Oasis

The Oasis International Centre for Study and Research

Venice, 9 October 2006

Press Release

The Catecheses of the Pope in Arabic on the Oasis website www.cisro.org.

The catecheses of the Pope in Arabic are available on-line on the website of the Oasis International Centre for Study and Research www.cisro.org.

Thanks to the support offered by ‘Help for the Church that Suffers’, the catechesis pronounced by the Pope on Wednesdays will be placed on this website every following Monday, and those given in past months, beginning with the new cycle on Christ and the Church that the Pope began on 15 March 2006, will also be gradually inserted.

This initiative is promoted by the Oasis International Centre for Study and Research, based in Venice, which is thus acting in line with the intention that most defines it: to foster a network of relations between Christian communities in countries with Muslim majorities and the communities that live in the West – a network of relations made possible by unity in the profession of the Christian faith.

The project of translating these catecheses seeks to be an opportunity to engage in a stage of a journey together: the translation into Arabic of the weekly catecheses of the Pope will allow the Christians who live in Arab countries to receive, together with everyone else, this special teaching regularly, but it could also be a useful instrument in Europe by which to foster encounter and dialogue with those large number of Arabic-speaking immigrants who live amongst us.

The translations will be the work of Camille Eid.

---

Some Brief Notes on the Oasis International Centre for Study and Research

What is it?

A network of relations: this is the most summarising definition of what the Oasis International Centre for Study and Research (CISRO), which was founded in September 2004 by the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Scola, within the Studium Generale Marcianum (www.marcianum.it), seeks to be at the level of ideals.

The Centre sees itself as a place for an exchange of experiences and judgements between different ecclesial realities: certain European Churches on the one hand, and certain Christian communities in countries with a Muslim majority, on the other. For the wider community that these communities constitute, the relationship with Islam is an ineluctable horizon. Oasis is to be located within this horizon and it examines the concrete modalities of relations with the faithful of the Muslim religion with a view to the construction of a personal and social ‘good life’.

Its instruments

1. The journal, which is also called Oasis, and is published every six months in four bilingual editions: Italian-Arabic; English-Arabic; French-Arabic; and English-Urdu.
2. The website (www.cisro.org) which swiftly publishes contributions, testimonies and papers on the most up-to-date subjects and debates inherent to the fields in which Oasis is interested which reach the Centre from all over the world thanks to an international network of relations.
3. A series of books of which hitherto two have been published – both translations from the French: La promessa by Cardinal Lustiger, and Cristiani e musulmani, fratelli davanti a Dio? by the Jesuit Christian Van Nispen who has lived for more than forty years in Cairo. A third book on Islam in Indonesia, which is divided between its tolerant tradition and new fundamentalist impulses, is currently being prepared for publication.

more information: 0039 - 347 - 1589822

Address
Centro Internazionale di Studi e Ricerche Oasis: Dorsoduro 1, 30123 Venice, Italy.
Tel: +39 041 2743964,
Fax: + 39 041 2743998,
oasis@marcianum.it,
www.cisro.org.