Pope Benedict meets leaders of Germany's mainly Turkish Muslim community on Saturday to stress the importance he places, like his predecessor, on closer ties with other faiths.
The Pope, on a four-day visit to his native Germany for a Catholic youth festival, has already met Jewish and Protestant groups, but his meeting with Muslims could be more strained given his opposition to Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
Before becoming Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said Muslim but secular Turkey should seek its future in an association of Islamic nations, not with the EU, which has Christian roots.
Turkey had always been "in permanent contrast to Europe", he said in an interview last year for France's Le Figaro magazine, adding that linking it to Europe would be a mistake.
Members of the Turkish Islamic Religious Authority, which operates many of the mosques in Germany, and Germany's central Islamic council will briefly meet the pontiff in the residence of the archbishop of Cologne. Around 3.2 million Muslims live in Germany, two million of whom are of Turkish origin.
German politicians have begun to question the extent of their integration, with conservatives in particular saying multi-cuturalism has failed and parallel societies are rife. Germany has also been forced to take a tougher line on Islamic extremists and so-called hate preachers since the September 11 attacks on the United States, in which three of the suicide pilots were students who had been living in Hamburg.
Benedict said shortly after his election that he appreciated the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians both at local and international level. One of the trickiest challenges he faces is maintaining friendly relations with other religions, which he upset in his previous job as Vatican doctrinal enforcer.
He has appeared to present a softer line since being elected head of the Catholic Church after the death in April of John Paul, for whom inter-religious dialogue was a main aim. Benedict paid a historic visit to Cologne synagogue on Friday, becoming only the second pope known to have visited a synagogue.
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