Vatican cardinals have warned Italian women against tying the knot with the rising numbers of Muslims in Italy, citing what they say cultural and religious diversities. Church officials say that Italy has seen 20,000 marriages in 2005 between Catholic women and Muslims, whose population touches the one million mark, the BBC News Online reported Monday, December 26. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Vicar General of Rome, had said that cultural differences over issues such as the role of women and education of children make it difficult for Catholic women to marry Muslims. ”The experience of recent years leads us as a general rule to advise against or in any case to discourage these marriages,” he wrote in a document released last month. Late Pope John Paul II was the first pope in history to pray in a mosque, when he visited Damascus. His successor, Benedict XVI, has insisted that he is also keen to promote religious and cultural dialogue with the Islamic world. Commenting on the warning of Catholic-Muslim marriages, an Egyptian Catholic priest said the move comes in response to concerns over the growing numbers of Muslims in Italy. ”The warning expresses fears of the Catholic cardinals that Italian women who marry Muslims would later revert to Islam,” priest Kristian Van Spen, professor of philosophy, Cairo University, told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, December 27. ”In addition, they are also concerned that children born to this marriage will also embrace Islam.This, consequently, will lead to an increase of the number of Muslims in Italy,” he stressed. There are an estimated 1.5 million Muslims in Italy, a country of about 58 million people. Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci warned in her book ”La forza della ragione,” which translates as The Force of Reason, that Europe is turning into ”an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that ”to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason.” The Egyptian priest cited a number of motives leading to the marriage of the Italian Catholic woman from a Muslim Observers who monitor Europe`s Muslim population estimate that several thousands of men and women revert to Islam each year, according to a report by the Christian Science Monitor Tuesday. Ms. Fallot, who converted to Islam three years ago after asking herself spiritual questions to which she found no answers in her childhood Catholicism, says she finds the suspicion her new religion attracts ”wounding.” ”For me,” she adds, ”Islam is a message of love, of tolerance and peace.” In fact, she explains, she liked the way ”Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it`s easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points.” It is a message that appeals to more and more Europeans as curiosity about Islam has grown since 9/11, say both Muslim and non-Muslim researchers. Although there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe`s Muslim population estimate that several thousand men and women convert each year. Admittedly patchy research suggests that more women than men convert, experts say, but that - contrary to popular perception - only a minority do so in order to marry Muslim men. Others are attracted by ”a certain idea of womanhood and manhood that Islam offers,” suggests Karin van Nieuwkerk, who has studied Dutch women converts. ”There is more space for family and motherhood in Islam, and women are not sex objects.”