This is his 18th trip outside Italy since his election as pope in 2013, and only the second visit by a modern pope to Egypt, after Pope John Paul II came here in 2000. Unlike that visit, security measures here seemed to separate the pope from the people of Cairo, as officials, already skeptical of public assemblies, cordoned off and essentially shut down the city in the areas he visited.

The pope’s remarks at the conference hosted by Al Azhar are likely to be remembered as Francis’ definitive effort to improve relations with Islam and mitigate the violence roiling the region.

With Grand Imam Tayeb seated beside him on a stage decorated with minarets, Francis said that more attention needed to be paid to educating the young “to counter effectively the barbarity of those who foment hatred and violence” and warned that “evil only gives rise to more evil, and violence to more violence.”

He argued that education, which Al Azhar has large influence over in the Sunni world beyond Egypt’s borders, was crucial to preventing new generations of radicals. The center, which trains many of the Sunni world’s imams and oversees the education of millions of Egyptian children and college students and is funded by Mr. Sisi’s government, has made progress in removing extremist language from textbooks.

“This is a big moment in Catholic-Muslim dialogue,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a veteran Vatican observer and senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “Everybody in the Muslim world is going to know that this has happened.”

Perhaps speaking to the concerns of conservative Catholics worried that the pope would drift too far in his search for a Muslim interlocutor with real power, the pope made a point to emphasize that respect for one’s own identity and religious formation was a critical step to having the “courage to accept differences.” It would help the two faiths walk together not as enemies but as “fellow travelers.”

“This was more than just a meeting between two people,” Ahmed Ramzy el Sabbagh, a cleric in the red and white skullcap worn by scholars at Al Azhar. “It was a meeting of religions.”