Pope baptises former Muslim during Easter vigil

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday baptised a former Muslim among seven converts to Roman Catholicism during an Easter vigil mass at St Peter's Basilica.

Magdi Allam, a 55-year-old Italian journalist of Egyptian origin, is an editorial writer and deputy publisher of the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

He was long described as a moderate Muslim before he decided to convert to Catholicism.

"People who are baptised and believers are never strangers to each other," the pope said in his homily. "Continents, cultures, social structures and historical distances cannot separate us.

"But we meet each other, we know each other by the same Lord, the same faith, the same hope, and the same love that shapes us."

Allam, who has been...