Now, swollen in its ranks with foreign workers, mainly from India and the Philippines, the network is preparing to receive the Pope, the leader of the 1. 3 billion Catholics in the world.
This week, Pope Francis, his moment in the Arabian Peninsula, will be poignant for Najla Uchi, whose father Salman built the Church of the Sacred Heart that opened on Christmas Eve 1939.
After candles at his home in Manama, capital of the tiny Gulf nation, Uchi pulls out archives of old photographs of his father and a medal he won for building the church.
“My father left his hometown, the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, a while ago,” he told AFP. “He came to Bahrain and settled here. “
More than 80 years after his consecration, the Sacred Heart is on the pontiff’s itinerary in the Muslim-majority monarchy of some 80,000 Catholics.
Last December, Bahrain also inaugurated the cavernous Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, which is located near an oil well and is the largest Catholic church on the peninsula.
Before the Sacred Heart, Uchi said, priests “used to come from Iraq once a month to conduct ceremonies for Bahraini Christians. “
“When I grew up in Bahrain, Christian families were small. But today, when we attend Sunday Mass, there are thousands of Christians in the church. “
Bahrain strives to provide itself as a style of tolerance, with Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist temples as well as Christian churches.
“Life in Bahrain is simple, we grew up among neighbors of other families in Manama,” Uchi said. “Religious, ethnic or linguistic differences were not a barrier between us. “
Last year, after Bahrain established ties with Israel in 2020, a synagogue that had been closed after the 1947 riots reopened in Manama, allowing Jews to pray in public for the first time in decades.
The pontiff first sent the Arabian Peninsula to the United Arab Emirates in 2019, when he celebrated an open-air Mass for some 170,000 people.
“I am very pleased to meet him in Bahrain,” Uchi said. I went to meet him on his layover in the United Arab Emirates. “
Some two million Catholics in the Arabian Peninsula, the cradle of Islam, and a million more in the United Arab Emirates, according to the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia in Abu Dhabi.
Christians can worship in all Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, where the practice of any faith other than Islam is prohibited.
After arriving Thursday and meeting Bahrain’s King Hamad, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass for some 28,000 more people at Bahrain’s National Stadium on Saturday.
A 100-person multinational choir will sing in English, Tagalog, Arabic, Hindi and Latin at the Mass at Bahrain’s National Stadium.
The pope will also attend the interfaith convention of the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue and meet with the Grand Imam of Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar Mosque, as well as members of the Muslim Council of Elders.
Some human rights teams also hope Francis will pressure Bahrain’s Sunni leader, King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, to end the crackdown on Shiite Muslims, crackdown on opposition figures and activists and other abuses.
The Bahraini government has denied the allegations.
A government spokesman told AFP that “Bahrain, as a multicultural society and home to other people of many faiths, is proud of its values of tolerance and its long history of non-violent coexistence. “
The spokesperson added that while freedom of faith and worship, and the nonviolent expression of criticism and criticism, are enshrined in the constitution, Bahrain has a duty to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute Americans who “incite, advertise, or glorify violence or hatred. “”.
Father Charbel Fayad from Bahrain said that “it has a wonderful strategic size in strengthening Bahrain’s role. . . (in) the structure of (religious) bridges between East and West. “
Faithful Catholic Mona Koro, a Jordanian living in Bahrain, told AFP: “Our hearts rejoice. . . May His Holiness preside over the Divine Liturgy. . . We are lucky. “