Manama: Pope Francis will make the first pope in Bahrain on Thursday to attend a government-sponsored convention on the East-West discussion and to care for Bahrain’s small Catholic community, as part of his efforts to continue the discussion with the Muslim world.
The scale marks Francis’ moment in a Gulf Arab state and his moment in a Muslim-majority country in as many months, evidence that the argument with the Muslim world has become the cornerstone of his nearly 10-year pontificate.
He visited the UAE in 2019 and traveled to Kazakhstan for a leaders’ assembly in September.
In addition to meeting with Muslim leaders in Bahrain, he will celebrate Mass at the country’s national stadium for the country’s Catholic community.
Before Bahrain established the first church in the Gulf in the 1930s, priests came from Iraq to supply a small Catholic community.
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.
More than 80 years after his consecration, the Sacred Heart is on the pontiff’s itinerary in Bahrain, whose Catholics number some 80,000.
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, priests came from Iraq once a month to perform ceremonies for Christians in Bahrain.
About two million Catholics in the Arabian Peninsula, numbering one million in the United Arab Emirates, according to the Apostolic Vicariate of South Arabia in Abu Dhabi.
After arriving on Thursday and meeting Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Eisa Al Khalifa, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass for some 28,000 more people at Bahrain’s National Stadium on Saturday before leaving the country on Sunday.
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 take care of the Bahrain Interreligious 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.
Father Charbel Fayad of Bahrain said that “it has a wonderful strategic size to strengthen 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. “
When Pope Francis visits Bahrain this week, it will be a dream come true for many Christians in the Persian Gulf country, but also for Najla Uchi, whose father helped build the island state’s first Roman Catholic church.
Lighting a candle at the altar of her house covered in devout icons, Najla Uchi, 78, said she had prayed for Pope Francis.
“Many other people didn’t even dream that they could see the pope here,” he told Reuters. “When I go to church, they don’t, they’re all excited. “
Uchi’s father Salman, the prime contractor of the Church of the Sacred Heart, built on land donated through the ruling emir.
Its bells rang for the first time on Christmas Eve 1939, to its website.
His father came to Bahrain from Iraq and later received Bahraini citizenship. Uchi was born in Bahrain and is a citizen.
In the courtyard of Sacred Heart Church, other people pose for photographs in front of posters of Pope Francis.
“I’m satisfied to be here [the church], just for my father, everything is glorious there. . . we are all one family,” Uchi said.
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