Their vision of an inter-religious gathering to show their support was realised in Paris last Saturday, when they joined with Catholics and Christians of other religions in song and prayer.

The celebration of inter-faith togetherness was organised by Christian movement Efesia as part of its "Together with Mary" inter-religious group.

President of Efesia, Gerard Testard, said he was delighted to see "our Muslim friends come as if visiting a wounded person."

Paris' Auxiliary Bishop Denis Jachiet represented Catholics, Anouar Kbibech, Vice-President of the French Council of Muslim Worship, represented the Sunni Muslims, while Sheikh Mohamed Ali Mortada represented Shiites.

Jachiet reminded the gathering that the "Notre-Dame is much more than the cathedral of the Catholics of Paris."

Ghaleb Bencheikh, who is an Islamologist and president of the Foundation of Islam in France, shared similar sentiments.

"There will be a first physical reconstruction but also an intangible reconstruction, that of the nation," he said.

In Kbibech 's opinion, this second aspect has already begun.

"Today's meeting symbolises three levels of fraternity: between believers of the same religion, between believers of all faiths and with humanity," he said.

People from the Shiite community are positive about the event.

"We had organized an event around Mary just before the fire, at the Shiite mosque in La Courneuve, with our friends from Efesia. At a meeting, after the disaster, we asked ourselves how we could show our support for the Christian community," one said.

Another commented: "We have come for the union between Muslims and Christians. We want peace in France. We too are with Our Lady". She was "touched" and "sad" when she saw images of the burning cathedral.

Yet another said: "[Notre Dame is] a symbol. When people come to Paris there is the Eiffel Tower, it's true, but Notre-Dame is even more important".

Jachiet was of a similar opinion, saying "Notre-Dame is much more than the cathedral of the Catholics of Paris."

After more than an hour of prayers, songs, readings from the Gospel according to St John and suras from the Quran about the "human gathering," two doves were released.

Source

• La Croix
• Image: La Croix International

Aupetit has called for a study into the possibility of housing families and lay people in the buildings of the Paris seminary building.

Sharing meals and time for communal prayer, "seminarians will therefore be able to meet the people for whose pastoral care he will later be responsible," Aupetit says. Read more

Coordinating Catholic aid is Jerome Perrin, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris. Read more

They were arrested separately on Tuesday. France's LCI television said they may have provided logistical help to chief suspect Sid Ahmed Ghlam. Read more

At his Angelus address on Sunday, the Pope congratulated world leaders on reaching the agreement.

Implementing the plan, he said, will require "a concerted and generous commitment on the part of each one".

The Pope expressed his hope that the agreement will give special attention to the most vulnerable.

Pope Francis exhorted the entire international community "to promptly continue the path taken, as a sign of solidarity which becomes ever more active".

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The papal shoes - black Oxfords - joined thousands of other sneakers, slippers and pumps in a symbolic march at the Place de la Republique.

The art installation was a substitute for a protest Global Climate Action march in the city.

The march was called off after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris.

Above the papal shoes was a laminated sign with Francis's signature and the words "Laudato Si'".

Shoes from other religious leaders were beside the Pope's.

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This is just the latest and probably most visible instance because it happened in one of the hubs of the European and North American news media.

These hubs make things that happen in too many other parts of the world actually reach living rooms worldwide.

As such, this event is something that makes very clear what has been around for a long while in many parts of the world. Media focus actually makes these events part of the lives of people everywhere.

And the focus on Paris shows no sign of going away.

These events are stunning to many viewers and readers. But they will be poorly served by the media channels carrying the news because all seem to share the Western religious illiteracy of so called "developed" secular societies.

I live in Asia and never cease to marvel that little if any informed attention is given to the religious foundations of much that disturbs Asian societies and is now convulsing Europe.

The cultural poverty of the West about religious matters really comes home to roost when events like this occur.

Not that the cultural ignorance doesn't have its own causes. It grows out of a history of conflicts based on religion in Europe that can understandably lead to a form of amnesia.

The medieval Crusades but most importantly the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th Centuries showed that Christianity itself was more a trigger to violence than a means of reconciling aggrieved parties.

The European wars of religion were a series of conflicts from ca. 1524 to 1648, following the onset of the Protestant Reformation in Central, Western and Northern Europe.

Although sometimes unconnected, all of these wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period, and the conflict and rivalry that it produced.

From those conflicts came a few things:

• The end of the marriage of altar and throne in the medieval period that had the morals set by the Catholic Church and regulated by Catholic monarchs;
• The beginnings of the nation state and the recognition that if humanity were to survive, a new and more effective set of values and better ways of regulating social interactions had to be found;
• The emergence of new cultural forms that applied to every social domain from the development of patterns of politeness in the way people treated one another to the creation of new ways of regulating society exemplified in the establishment of police forces.

All this has been clearly explained by the Canadian philosopher and cultural historian Charles Taylor in his acclaimed and multi-award winning A Secular Age. Taylor argues persuasively that Europeans learnt the hard way how to live with one another over a century or more.

This is a learning Islam has yet to accommodate.

While Islam is divided in a similar way to the one between Catholics and Protestants (the Sunni and Shia divide), Muslims also focus their hostilities and misgivings beyond their own faith community with the barbaric consequences we saw in Paris and could see anywhere.

Islamic extremists can't and won't tolerate difference. But the source of that view comes from the religion itself.

Say what you like about Christianity, but there's a mighty different set of resources for Christians to draw on than are readily to hand for Muslims.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has etched into cultures influenced by the Gospel something that neither Islam nor Buddhism, for that matter, have bequeathed to the cultures they have given birth to.

The distinctive contribution of Christianity to civilization is a rich and deep sense of paradox and its close relative, irony.

It's where our notions of tragedy come from. It feeds what we got from Greek notions of tragedy. A rich sense of paradox feeds an imagination that can accommodate difference, that sees vitality coming in helplessness, that sees something coming out of nothing.

Christians should always be open to surprises because the God of Jesus Christ writes straight with crooked lines. And people open to following Jesus are believers that everyone should be given another chance.

That's the basis of acceptance of others as they are. The acceptance of difference is hard to find among many Muslims who think that the only good Christian is one who converts to Islam.

The incarnation of Jesus means Christians have to look at and accept reality in all its complexity and variety as a carrier of, not a distraction from, God's presence.

Accepting people as they are is not just absent in the bomb-throwing and machine-gun firing sort of Muslim.

The failure to accept people as they are is a broader feature of Islam. Just as Christianity used to be, too many Muslims today unfortunately believe we all should be followers of the Prophet.

These murderous beings at work in Paris and in the Middle East have only one response to enemies: kill them and forget about it. The objects of their behavior have no right to be respected especially because they're wrong.

I think the world has outgrown the ability to accommodate this sort of Islam. It's up to Muslims to explain to us why they can't offer the rest of us the tolerance and welcome that we offer them.

It might be some time in coming.

• Michael Kelly SJ is a Jesuit priest, journalist and the executive director of UCA News. First published in John Menadue - Pearls and Irritations. Republished with the author's permission.

Perhaps we should put them all on an island and drop a bomb on it. But then that would make us the SOBs. Such is life.

I'm being simplistic but the horror of Paris generates simple emotions: despair and anger.

When people react, they fall back on ideologies and prejudices.

I'm told a caller to BBC's Any Answers on Saturday afternoon argued for the introduction of concentration camps and force-feeding pork to inmates.

I haven't dared look to see if anyone has Tweeted "this is why Europeans need a Second Amendment", but I'm sure they have.

Meanwhile, some of the far-Left blame the victim.

A post on the Stop The War website said that the West was "reaping" the whirlwind of its imperialist foreign policy. If in doubt, point the finger at Tony Blair.

Somewhere between inaction and overreaction sit the politicians.

There will be a lot of talk about "solidarity" in the next few days and that's a noble sentiment.

But what exactly did the last bout of solidarity, following the Hebdo attacks, achieve?

Not only did it fail to prevent another outrage but it didn't actually produce a coherent Western policy towards the Middle East. France is officially engaged in Syria but Britain is not. Russia and America are thought to be bombing different targets. The EU is falling apart over migration - and we can expect its open borders to shut.

What about French society itself? This is plainly a country struggling to come to terms with cultural change.

In his new novel, Submission, Michel Houellebecq imagines a future in which Catholics, socialists and Muslims unite to defeat a Front National presidency - and replace the republic with a proto-Caliphate. The much derided book now seems prescient: who doubts that Marine Le Pen will be a major political beneficiary of these attacks? Continue reading

• Tim Stanley is a historian, and columnist and leader writer for The Telegraph in London

Speaking on Sunday, Cardinal Pietro Parolin cited conditions stipulated under Catholic just war doctrine.

He said comments Pope Francis made in 2014 that it is "licit" to use force to disarm an unjust aggressor remain valid.

The cardinal said it is important that any military action enjoy international support.

He also indicated that the Vatican will not back any specific plan for action against ISIS.

"Our role is to remember these [just war] conditions, not to specify means to stop the aggressor," he said.

He called for a global mobilisation to root out terrorism and said the Muslim community must be part of any wider solution.

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Speaking at his Sunday Angelus address at St Peter's Square, the Pope expressed his pain at the violence and offered his condolences to France's president and people.

"Such barbarity leaves us bewildered and makes us ask ourselves how the heart of man can think of and realise such horrible events, that have shocked not only France but the whole world," said Francis.

"In front of these acts, you cannot not condemn the unspeakable affront to the dignity of the human person," he said.

"I want to reaffirm with vigour that the way of violence and hate does not resolve the problems of humanity and that to use the name of God to justify this way is blasphemy!"

The Pontiff then led the thousands in the square in a special prayer to the Virgin Mary, calling her "the mother of mercy" and asking that she "protect and watch over the dear French nation, the first daughter of the Church, and over Europe and the whole world".

In an earlier interview, the Pope said the attacks were "not human" and said he found them difficult to understand.

Francis reportedly said the attacks were part of a piecemeal third world war.

He also pledged his prayers, love and closeness to the families of the victims.

In Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois asked all parishes to comply with the recommendations of civil authorities that residents stay home and for schools, universities, theatres, gyms, and other institutions to remain closed.

On Sunday, Cardinal Vingt-Trois celebrated a Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was broadcast live throughout France.

Thousands of mourners gathered outside the cathedral.

The cardinal earlier said in a statement: "We ask that grace be the artisan of peace. We need never despair of peace if we build on justice."

He condemned the attacks on his city, praised first responders and urged unity.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi described the incidents as an attack on humanity in general.

The Church, he stressed, wants peace and that the Jubilee Year of Mercy - called by the Pope and due to start next month - was needed more than ever.

Sources

• Crux
• Vatican Radio (Cardinal Vingt-Trois statement)
• The Tablet
• ITV
• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Vatican Radio

Cardinal André Vingt-Trois wants these groups to report back to him by Pentecost.

He explained that the teams should have six to 12 members, chosen by priests with their parish council.

He wrote: "Married couples, single parents, widows or widowers . . . the main thing is that they can work together."

The parish teams are to send him a report that focuses not on Church teaching about families, but on concrete problems that families face and what the diocese can do for them.

Last week, the English translation of the final report from the Synod on the Family became available.

This included the three paragraphs that did not get the traditional two thirds majority vote, but which were put into the final report by Pope Francis anyway, as well as the voting tallies.

A note at the end of the document stressed it was a work in progress that looked forward to next October's larger synod.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx told media that: "The doors are open - wider than they have ever been since the Second Vatican Council."

Cardinal Marx, who is a member of the Pope's advisory council of cardinals added: "Francis wants to get things moving."

He said it was the Pope's explicit wish that ordinary Catholics take part in the reform process.

The cardinal said: "We are all Church together and we want to move ahead together on this way forward, so ‘Avanti', as Pope Francis always says."

Synod secretary-general Cardinal Lorenzo Baldissieri told British lawmakers that "a very important aspect of the Church's life is based on our understanding that the Spirit of the Risen Christ is given to all the baptised".

"Synods are not about taking a poll or voting in a democratic way on Church teaching and practice, but they embody a humble openness to the fact that the Lord is leading the pilgrim Church through the power of the Holy Spirit," he said.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic World News
• Image: Catholic Voices

The culture ministry and national heritage officials discussed the proposal without telling the Church.

The rector-archpriest of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris said having a fee would make free access by believers almost impossible.

Msgr Partick Jacquin painted a picture of two lines at the cathedral, one for visitors and one for the faithful.

"It's absurd - one would have to ask for baptismal certificates at the door."

All religious buildings in France built before 1905 belong to the state, which is responsible for their upkeep.

A change to the law separating church and state would be needed for the fees plan to proceed.

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The graceful and inspiring Catholic church that has dominated Paris since the 12th century, survived the Hundred Years War, the French Revolution and two world wars is being readied for an invasion of camera-wielding birthday visitors.

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The head of the Theatre du Rond-Point on the Champs-Elysees complained of death threats in the runup to Thursday's premiere of the play Golgota Picnic by the Madrid-based, Argentinian writer Rodrigo Garcia. Two men reported to have links to fundamentalist Catholic groups were arrested at the weekend while attempting to disable the theatre's security system.

Several Catholic groups have called for peaceful demonstrations, prayer-vigils and the laying down of white flowers outside the building every night the play is shown, while the Archbishop of Paris will lead protest prayers against the play at Notre Dame Cathedral.