(PerMariam) — Editor’s note: The following is the full text of an intervention given by Gerhard Cardinal Müller at the 2026 edition of the Tavole di Assisi conference, organised by Italian Setanor Simone Pillon. First reported in English by this correspondent for the Catholic Herald, the full text can now be read below after Cdl. Müller sent it to Per Mariam.
Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to thank Senator Simone Pillon, the speakers, and the participants in the Assisi 2026 roundtables.
The topic assigned to me is the relationship between the Christian West, post-humanism, and Islam in light of the lesson of St. Francis, who invited the sultan to convert.
Today we are facing an unprecedented identity crisis. The Christian West is no longer merely threatened by external forces, but is being eroded by an internal apostasy. We are witnessing the triumph of post-humanism: a nihilistic ideology that, in its attempt to emancipate humanity from God, ends up destroying humanity itself, reducing it to manipulable matter, to an algorithm among algorithms, and depriving it of its dignity as the image and likeness of the Creator.
On the other hand, we are witnessing the vigorous expansion of Islam, a faith that—unlike our secularized West—is not ashamed of God, is not ashamed of transcendence, but proposes an anthropology and a revelation radically different from those of Christianity.
In this scenario, the question we ask ourselves is crucial: is the lesson of St. Francis of Assisi—who, eight hundred years ago, went to Sultan Malik al-Kamil and invited him to convert to Christ—still valid?
The answer from Catholic theology and right reason is unequivocal: yes, it is not only valid, but urgent and indispensable.
Today, unfortunately, a certain sentimental and relativist trend has portrayed St. Francis as a precursor of modern syncretism, a prophet of pacifist dialogue as an end in itself, where all religions are equivalent and none possesses the truth. This is a historical and theological falsification! Francis did not go to Egypt to launch a diplomatic salon or to confirm the Sultan in his faith. Francis went to the Sultan driven by love for souls and by the unshakable certainty that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of mankind. True love for others does not consist in leaving them in error, but in proclaiming to them the Truth that sets them free.
The call to conversion is not an act of hostility, nor a legacy of medieval intolerance. On the contrary, it is the highest act of charity.
If we look at post-humanism, the West has lost its faith because it has lost its reason. We think we can redefine human nature, marriage, life, and death. Faced with this spiritual void, Islam appears to many as a solid rock. But the answer to Western nihilism cannot be submission to a conception of God that separates faith from reason, or that conceives of divine omnipotence as pure arbitrariness.
St. Francis’s lesson to the Sultan reminds us that the alternative to nihilism is not fundamentalism, but Christ, the incarnate Logos. In Christ, divine reason becomes flesh and reveals itself as Love.
Interreligious dialogue, if it is to be authentic and respectful of human dignity, cannot be based on disguising one’s own identity. Muslims do not respect a weak Christianity that is ashamed of the Cross and reduces itself to a charity organization or an environmental watchdog. They respect those who believe. St. Francis showed respect for the Sultan precisely because he spoke to him with the parrhesia of the Holy Spirit, offering his own life as a witness.
We can do the same, offering to people of the Muslim faith who come to our countries what we have that is most precious: conversion to faith in the one true God.
Dear friends, the West will save itself from post-humanism and will not be assimilated by other faiths only if it rediscovers the courage of mission. We must not be afraid to proclaim Christ’s social kingship. We must return to saying, with the same humility and the same zeal as the Poor Man of Assisi, that outside of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.
The conversion that Francis asked of the Sultan is the very same conversion that we must ask today, first and foremost, of ourselves, of a Europe that has renounced its roots, and of every person who seeks the truth. “Only if the West puts God back at the center will humanity once again become truly human.”