A meeting between Democratic Unionist Party leader the Rev Ian Paisley and Archbishop of Armagh Dr Seán Brady will take place next week.
It will be the first time Dr Paisley has met a leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland and has been interpreted as an attempt to enlist the support of Dr Brady for DUP efforts to coax Sinn Féin into backing the PSNI.
A spokesman for the Catholic primate said Dr Brady was "looking forward" to the meeting in Stormont next Monday.
Addressing the Annual General Assembly of the Conference of the European Justice and Peace Commissions in Belfast a week ago, Dr Brady said he hoped the parties would commit themselves to an Assembly "which has full community support for the institutions of law and order".
The news of the meeting was welcomed by nationalist parties.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said he hoped it marked a "new beginning" for Dr Paisley.
"I hope it is the beginning of Dr Paisley saying 'yes'. He has said 'no' for far too long."
SDLP North Belfast MLA Alban Maginness hailed the meeting as an important political step saying it carried "major symbolic importance".
"I hope it represents a signal that the days of fiery anti-Roman tub-thumping are over. I hope Dr Paisley is in fact prepared to cleanse the DUP of the deeply-rooted sectarianism which infects that organisation at all levels."
Meanwhile, the latest report of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) is expected to be published on Wednesday.
The report, on the state of the paramilitary ceasefires, will cover the six months ending in August 2006.
Sinn Féin double agent Denis Donaldson was murdered in April, allegedly by IRA members acting without the sanction of the movement's leadership.
But sources have hinted that the report may also take a "longer view" of events. A positive assessment by the commission of IRA activity is not expected to be embraced by the DUP as crisis talks in Scotland aimed at restoring devolution beckon.
However, speaking on BBC Radio Ulster DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said he believed devolution was the best form of government. "People want to have elected representatives they can get at taking decisions rather than ministers who don't rely on one vote, and can take the most unpopular decisions and get into a plane, probably a private-hire jet, and off they go," he said.
Speaking at a rally in Letterkenny to mark the ending of the hunger strikes of 1981, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams also criticised the "unaccountability" of Direct Rule ministers.
And he said the DUP had nothing to gain from refusing to share power with Sinn Féin.
"It condemns them to living in a second-class society with second-class public services undermined by punitive fiscal policies administered by unaccountable British ministers." He said DUP "delaying tactics" would not stop political change such as greater North-South co-operation. "If and when unionism decides to come back to the negotiating table in the future, the progress that will have been made in those areas cannot and will not be undone or wished away.
"Irish republicans will be generous and magnanimous in our outreach to unionism because that has to be the mark of our vision which includes a view that orange and green can be united on the basis of equality . . . Unionism also needs to be generous and magnanimous," Mr Adams said.