Pope Francis is to meet the brother of David Haines, the British aid worker who was beheaded in Syria last year by Islamic State militants.
Mike Haines will meet the pontiff along with imam Shahnawaz Haque from east London, as part of a public appeal for greater interfaith tolerance and unity against extremism.
David Haines was the first Briton to be killed by Isis in the manner that has since become a trademark of the terror group.
It followed the earlier murders of two American journalists who had also been kidnapped. David Haines, 44 and a father of two, had previously worked in war zones and was a veteran of the Royal Air Force.
Mike Haines and Barbara Henning, the widow of Alan Henning, who was similarly murdered, have signed a joint letter calling on churches, mosques and synagogues to “open their doors and welcome people of all faiths”.
“Pope Francis has called for a common commitment to end fighting, hatred and violence. Mike Haines is living that commitment in an extraordinary way,” said Nigel Baker, the British ambassador to the Holy See.
The face-to-face dialogue between Haines and the pontiff comes amid signs that the Vatican would support military intervention against the jihadi group as a way to stem the persecution of Christians in the region.
The Catholic church usually opposes war, but Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned the targeted killing of Christians, including the beheading of 21 Christians in Libya earlier this year. The pontiff has also said in response to questions about Isis that it was “legitimate to stop an unjust aggressor” under certain circumstances.
One archbishop, Bashar Warda, of Irbil, Iraq, recently said military intervention was the only option, although he acknowledged that was a difficult position to endorse for a Catholic bishop.
He told British lawmakers in February that the Iraqi army was not capable of defeating Isis and that “someone has to do the fighting”, according to a report in Crux, which covers the Vatican.
The blog also reported that the Italian archbishop Silvano Tomasi, who represents the Holy See at the United Nations, said the violence committed by Isis was a “genocide”.
John Allen, the Crux’s associate editor, wrote that while Pope Francis was not a neocon, he could decide to follow in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II. “[He might] reluctantly acknowledge that on rare occasions, a humanitarian intervention, backed up by force, may be the only way to defend people who otherwise have no hope,” Allen wrote.
