Sheik Ahmed al Tayeb, the head of Egypt’s Al Azhar university, praised Pope Francis as “a man of peace and humanity par excellence,” during an October 8 interview in the Vatican Radio studios in Rome.

The Muslim leader said that the Pope’s encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is “definitely of huge importance, especially in this time, for Muslims and non-Muslims.” He said that he and the Pontiff share “a great spiritual and thoughtful attunement toward the crises that afflict contemporary man.”