CNA Staff, Oct 21, 2025 / 15:56 pm (CNA).
Reports circulating in media outlets and on social media in October 2025 allege that the Vatican has opened a prayer room for Muslims in the Apostolic Library.
Claim: The Vatican Library has opened a prayer room for Muslims.
CNA finds: The library does allow Muslim scholars a room in which to pray while they are on site doing research in the Vatican’s extensive archives.
Breakdown: In mid-October 2025, sensational news coverage rocketed around internet media outlets and social media feeds: The Vatican is “allow[ing]” a “designated Muslim prayer room” in its Apostolic Library (National Review); the library has “add[ed] a Muslim prayer room” (The Dallas Express); the Vatican has “[set] up [a] dedicated Muslim prayer room at [the] heart of [the] pope’s 500-year-old library” (GB News); the Holy See has “open[ed]” a “Muslim prayer room in [the] Apostolic Library” (EuroWeekly News).
The headlines are not technically inaccurate. But they appear to suggest a sort of proactivity on the Vatican’s part, as if the Holy See opened up a Muslim prayer room in order to cater to Rome’s Islamic population. And readers could be forgiven for thinking the endeavor is more significant than it appears to be.
Indeed, the reports generated passionate criticism online; one deacon, for instance, claimed the prayer room constitutes “a total betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” while the news outlet Zenit noted the policy had sparked a “quiet storm” in response.
The truth appears to be somewhat more mundane. The prayer room’s existence became widely known after the Oct. 8 publication of an interview between the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and the priest Father Don Giacomo Cardinali, the vice prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library.
In the wide-ranging interview, Cardinali described the library as a “universal institution” and “the most secular of the entire Holy See.”
“Our interlocutors are research centers, public universities, the Louvre, the Metropolitan, NASA,” the priest told the newspaper. “They don’t really know what a priest is, much less how to distinguish him from a bishop or a cardinal.”
Asked if “scholars of other religions” ever come to the library, the priest responded: “Of course.”
“Some Muslim scholars asked us for a room with a carpet to pray, [so] we gave it to them: We have incredible ancient Korans,” the priest said.
“We are a universal library,” he added. “There are Arabic, Jewish, Ethiopian collections, unique Chinese pieces. Years ago we discovered that we have the oldest medieval Japanese archive that exists outside the Rising Sun.”
The verdict: The Vatican Apostolic Library does indeed allow Muslims a room for prayer. But, importantly, it does not appear to be a generally accessible Islamic prayer space but rather one designated for the “Muslim scholars” that may be on site at the time. Further, it was only opened at the request of scholars themselves.
And though it is understandable that a Muslim prayer room in the Holy See may inspire a bit of cognitive dissonance, the vice prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library describes the space as nothing more than “a room with a carpet.”
Amid the sensational news coverage, Britain’s Daily Mail may have said it best when it reported, simply: “The Vatican has granted Muslim scholars’ request for a prayer room.”
We rate this claim true, with important context.
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When it come to fasting and prayer, Muslims are second to none. They pray for themselves and pray for those of us in need of prayers. Long live their love for prayer.
This is sugar coating something that never should have been allowed to happen. What next? A room for Satanists to pray? No. Just no. Ford doesn’t open a room at their headquarters library for GM to gather.
Would they allow a Christian prayer room at Masjid al-Haram or Al Aqsa?
Possibly yes…in the sense that in both cases—the Vatican Library (and the entire Vatican?) and the Christian prayer room—Christianity is subordinated and annexed to the central Islamic worldview… the madrassa! Jihad by another name…
Huh?
They “ rate this claim true, with important context”?
What context?
That the Muslim prayer room is actually a room where Muslims pray?
That the Muslim prayer room in the Vatican is actually in the Vatican Library?
I don’t see how the “important context” matters much.
The Vatican established a prayer room for Muslims. Period.
Now, I think a meaningful bit of context might be that Muslim fundamentalists are martyring Christians all around the world, including some ten thousand in this year alone in Nigeria.
The prayer room war. Will the Vatican pose no objection to a mosque and minaret calling Muslims to prayer day and night adjacent to Vatican City?
Cardinal Gerhard Muller alleged that the prayer room request was an encroachment, a statement that infers Islam is the superior faith. As a matter of arguable evidence we increasingly find mosques and minarets all over Europe, whereas we don’t find Muslim nations grading Christians ‘prayer spaces’ like churches. And if they do they’re subject to atrocities.
As an opinion it seems CNA’s Daniel Payne’s view is acceptable, that the request was made by Muslim scholars studying at the Apostolic library, and it should be reserved solely for them. A refusal aside from the politics would seem petty. It can also be viewed as an indication of Catholic magnanimity.