The Ayatollah and the Pope

Time's Jeff Israely reports that the Vatican may soon act as a key mediator in negotiations between Tehran and Washington over Iran's nuclear program.

Consider the irony of Pope Benedict—supposedly notorious in the Islamic world since his September 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany—acting as peacemaker between a Muslim power and the West.

While the Time piece focuses on the all-important geopolitical implications of such a relationship, Jeff incidentally raises a fascinating point about similarities between the faiths practiced in Vatican City and Iran:

Religious experts say that Catholicism and Shi'a Islam have a surprisingly similar structure and approach to their different faiths. "What you have in Iran is a strong academic tradition, with both philosophical and mystical aspects — in many ways like Catholicism," says Father Daniel Madigan, a Jesuit scholar of Islam, and a member of the Vatican's commission for religious relations with Islam who helped arrange for Khatami's visit. There is also a clerical hierarchy in Shi'ism that is absent in other forms of Islam.

No doubt by coincidence, Reuters reports that the Vatican will soon issue a response to October's open letter signed by 138 Muslim scholars and clerics seeking better relations with the Christian world.