Reports circulating in the media and on social media in October 2025 claim that the Vatican has opened a prayer room for Muslims in the Apostolic Library.
Affirmation: The Vatican Library has opened a prayer room for Muslims.
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Conclusion: The library does allow Muslim scholars to have a room in which to pray while they are on site conducting research in the Vatican’s extensive archives.
Context: In mid-October 2025, sensational news coverage spread across digital and social media: the Vatican is “allowing” a “designated prayer room for Muslims” in its Apostolic Library (National Review); the library has “added a Muslim prayer room” (The Dallas Express); The Vatican has “(established) (a) Muslim prayer room in the heart of the Pope’s 500-year-old library” (GB News); The Holy See has “opened” a “Muslim prayer room in the Apostolic Library” (EuroWeekly News).
The headlines are not technically inaccurate. But they seem to suggest a certain proactivity on the part of the Vatican, as if the Holy See had opened a Muslim prayer room to serve Rome’s Islamic population. And it would be understandable if readers thought the initiative was more significant than it actually seems.
In fact, the reports generated passionate criticism online; a deacon, for example, stated that the prayer room constitutes “a total betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” while the Zenit media pointed out that the policy had sparked a “silent storm” in response.
The truth seems to be somewhat more mundane. The existence of the prayer room became widely known after the publication, on October 8, of an interview between the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and Father Giacomo Cardinali, vice-rector 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 replied: “Of course.”
“Some Muslim scholars asked us for a room with a prayer rug, (so) we gave it to them: We have incredible ancient Qurans,” the priest said.
“We are a universal library,” he added. “There are Arab, Jewish, Ethiopian collections, unique Chinese pieces. Years ago we discovered that we have the oldest medieval Japanese archive that exists outside of the Rising Sun.”
Verdict: The Vatican Apostolic Library does allow Muslims a room for prayer. But, importantly, it does not appear to be a general-access Islamic prayer space, but rather one designated for “Muslim scholars” who may be on site at the time. Furthermore, it was only enabled at the request of the academics themselves.
And while it is understandable that a Muslim prayer room in the Holy See might stir up some cognitive dissonance, the vice-rector of the Vatican Apostolic Library describes the space as nothing more than “a room with a carpet.”
Amid the sensational coverage, Britain’s Daily Mail may have expressed better when he reported, simply: “The Vatican has granted the Muslim scholars’ request for a prayer room.”
We qualify this statement as true, with important context.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Daniel Payne
Daniel Payne is senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.