In our neighborhood, the churches are empty but the mosques are full,” a priest participating in an training session in Orsay admitted. Organized by the Office for Islamic Relations in the French Bishops Conference, this training session allowed this priest a week to explore the historical, spiritual, social, cultural and religious aspects of Islam. At both the grassroots and institutional levels, contacts between Islam and Catholicism are frequent but remain formal and tagged with fears and clich_s.
