Hawzah News Agency- Hujjat al-Islam Seyyed Mufid Hosseini Kouhsari, head of seminary communication and international center, in this week's Internet TV program, ‘ Response’ which is aired by the Center for Answers to religious doubts, explained the issues of the Shia world and the world of Christianity and investigated the interactive capacities of the seminary with the Vatican while congratulating the Christians on the birthday of Jesus Christ (PBUH) and the beginning of the new year, he said,” Since the birth of Jesus Christ (PBUH) is important to us Muslims, it is necessary to congratulate this great Eid to all the Muslims of the world since Jesus (PBUH) is one of the first prophets and his birth is mentioned in great detail in the Holy Quran.”

Catholics are the largest Christian group

In explaining the possibility or impossibility of creating interaction between the seminary and the Vatican, he stated,” The Vatican is one of the oldest and most extensive religious institutions in the international arena including the institutions of the Christian world. Christianity includes different sects and Catholic are one of the Christian groups and perhaps the main and largest Christian group.

Catholics are the only Christian group that has a single religious leadership

Hujjat al-Islam Hosseini Kouhsari pointed out that among Catholics, the Vatican is considered a very authoritative and important institution and said, "Perhaps, out of the more than two and a half billion Christians in the world, there are about one billion and four hundred million Catholics. All these Catholics are governed under a specific religious institution and this feature is not present in other groups of Christianity. For example, among Orthodox Christians, each country and each region have its own Orthodoxy, and Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, Turkish Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy, and Hungarian Orthodoxy are different from one another; perhaps the churches do not have a specific religious focus.

He considered Iranians to have a proud record regarding inter-religious interaction and stated,” Some of the oldest Christian churches are located in Iran. In particular, some of these churches have a history of nearly eighteen centuries. When a place remains intact for centuries, it shows the interaction of the people of that area with each other. After the Islamic revolution, this relationship has become much closer. The many martyrs of Christianity along with other classes and ethnicities of Iran express this interaction and show the solidarity of Iranian people throughout history.