Pope Benedict called for all religions to unite against terrorism and resolve conflicts peacefully yesterday and heard an Islamic leader urge Christians to overcome "misconceptions and prejudices" about Muslims.
"In a world threatened by sinister and indiscriminate forms of violence, the unified voice of religious people urges nations and communities to resolve conflict through peaceful means and with full regard for human dignity," Pope Benedict told a meeting with Muslims, Jews and members of other non-Christian faiths.
The Pope, in Australia for the Church's World Youth Day, also said the Catholic Church was open to learn from other religions, a comment seen in the context of moves to improve relations with other religions, particularly Islam.
"The Church eagerly seeks opportunities to listen to the spiritual experience of other religions," he said.
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Pope Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.
Muslims around the world protested and the Pope sought to make amends when he visited Turkey's Blue Mosque and prayed towards Mecca with its Imam.
Sheikh Mohamadu Saleem, executive member of the Australian National Imams Council, told the Pope: "Muslims should become more inclusive and universal in their understanding of their religions.
"At the same time, significant segments of the Christian and other religious communities should overcome their misconceptions and prejudices of Islam and Muslims," Saleem said.
"If Muslims, Christians and other faith communities reach out to one another and build bridges rather than erect barriers, the whole of humanity will rejoice forever."
After the fall-out from the Regensburg speech, 138 Muslim scholars and leaders wrote to the German-born Pontiff and other Christian leaders last year and in March, the Vatican and Muslim leaders agreed to establish a permanent official dialogue, The Catholic-Muslim Forum to improve often difficult relations.
Saleem said he agreed with youths at the meeting in Sydney who have been saying "Let us promote fundamentalism of love, instead of fundamentalism of hatred".
Asked by a reporter after the meeting if the sting of the Pope's Regensburg speech was still there, Saleem said: "It is unfair to call Islam a violent religion."
Relations between Australia's small Muslim community and the largely Christian population have been strained since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the Iraq War, with Australia only recently withdrawing its troops from Iraq.
Race riots erupted at Sydney's Cronulla Beach in December 2005 as locals attacked anyone of Middle East appearance, believing they were Muslims intent on "taking over" their beach.
In late 2007 two pigs' heads were rammed on to metal stakes and an Australian flag draped between them on the site of a planned Muslim school on Sydney's outskirts. The plan was abandoned after protests by thousands of residents.
Speaking as the Anglican Church is facing one of the deepest crises in its history, the Pope also said that relations between Christian religions were at a critical crossroad.
"I think you would agree that the ecumenical movement has reached a critical juncture," he told representatives of various Christian Churches in Australia, including Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists.
While he did not elaborate on his comment, the pope appeared to be referring to the crisis gripping the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican community, with which the Vatican is engaged in dialogue aimed at eventual Christian unity.
The Anglican communion is deeply divided over the issue of gay bishops and women bishops.
A quarter of the world's Anglican bishops have boycotted the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican leaders being staged in the English cathedral city of Canterbury, spiritual home of the Church.
Liberal and conservative clergy have been brought to the brink of schism over the ordination in 2003 of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in the Church's 450-year history.
Conservative Anglican leaders staged their own conference in Jerusalem last month at which they pledged to form a council of bishops to provide an alternative to churches who they say are preaching a "false gospel" of sexual immorality.
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) said member churches would continue sponsoring breakaway conservative parishes in the liberal Western member countries and called for a separate conservative province in North America.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the worldwide Anglican leader, also faces another battle in the Church of England, the Anglican mother church, over plans to ordain women bishops.
Those plans have sparked threats of a mass walkout by conservative clergy and some have expressed a desire to convert to Catholicism.
The Catholic Church does not allow women priests, saying that Christ willingly chose only men as his apostles.
The Pope has already publicly expressed his concern over the future of Anglican Church, telling reporters aboard his plane earlier this week that he hoped it could avoid a schism.
"My essential contribution can only be prayer," he said. "The desire is that schisms and new fractures can be avoided," he said, adding that Catholic Church would not "intervene immediately" in their decisions.