Vatican Offers A Prayer Room Reserved For Muslims
The Vatican Library has 2 million+ books, thousands of manuscripts and archives, and now a Muslim prayer room.
Italian daily La Repubblica reported on October 8 that a prayer room has been reserved for Muslims just steps away from St. Peter’s Basilica at the Apostolic Library in the Hall of Sixtus V. "Of course, some Muslim scholars have asked us for a room with a carpet for praying and we have given it to them," said Fr. Giacomo Cardinali, who serves as Vice-Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, according to La Repubblica.
According to Cardinali, the collection includes several "incredibly old Korans." Cardinali said, "We are a universal library, there are Arabic, Jewish, Ethiopian collections, and unique Chinese items."
The Vatican collection has some of the oldest books known to mankind. For example, several years ago, the oldest medieval Japanese archive outside of Japan was found there. Salesian missionary Fr. Marega, collected the archives while serving in Japan in the 1920s. "Legend has it that the children of the oratory were playing with a ball of paper, and he realised that it was crumpled-up old documents. He became curious and found an abandoned archive in a ruined castle."
Marega saved the archives, which were later brought to Rome. "It was either a sensational stroke of luck or an inspiration from above," Cardinali said. The Vice Prefect attested that the Vatican Library contains more than two million books, 80,000 manuscripts, and 50,000 archive items. In addition, it has 100,000 engravings and prints and 100,000 coins and medals. New material is frequently discovered. "A few years ago, a scholar discovered a very rare manuscript of Spinoza's Ethics," Cardinali said.
The Vatican Library also has a public online service . According to Cardinali, the most absurd requests from the United States. Among the questions he cited were: "Do you have a time machine? And the menorah from the temple in Jerusalem that Titus took away? And the Holy Grail?"
Cardinali is reserving judgement about the usefulness of artificial intelligence in the library. He said, “Computer science may help, but it cannot fulfil the tasks of a serious scientist. "I don't know if the machine would recognise a forgery. Maybe yes, but it wouldn't be able to reconstruct the complicated history."