Muslims brothers and to offer their customary prayers. This isn’t a sequence from any Bollywood film, but a reality in the parish of Our Lady of Assumption of Ponzano near Venice, the romantic city of Italy. The pastor of the parish, Don Aldo Danieli, 69, affirms, “It’s useless to speak of religious dialogs and then bang the door on their face. Pope John Paul II addressed them as, ‘dear Muslim brothers’. How can we close our church doors to them?”

At Ponzano, in the province of Treviso, live some 11,500 people of whom 232 families are immigrants, making their number roughly 650. These are mainly immigrants from North African countries and Eastern Europe. Two years ago, Don Aldo decided to open the doors of the church to these Muslim immigrants and keep a portion of his own parochial house including a kitchen and a little at their disposal. On Fridays an average of 200 Muslim believers gather in the church and offer prayers. But in the month of Ramadan, the number swells to 1000-1200. “They requested me and I said yes, moreover, the kitchen and hall were a home for spiders