MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Pope Francis left Bahrain on Sunday, Nov. 6, after four days that ended with a stopover at the Gulf’s oldest Catholic church, where he told bishops, priests and nuns to stay united as they serve. the faithful in the Muslim-majority area.
The last event of his four days took place at the Church of the Sacred Heart, built in 1939 on land donated by the then-leader, putting Bahrain on track to become one of the region’s most welcoming countries for non-Muslims.
Bahrain has two Catholic churches, plus a fashionable cathedral that is the largest church in the Arabian Peninsula and has around 160,000 Catholics, mostly foreign workers. Many Catholics are also neighbors of Saudi Arabia, which bans public worship of non-Muslims.
Pope Francis, who suffers from a knee illness that forced him to use a wheelchair during the trip, told local Catholic leaders to avoid factions, disputes and gossip.
“Worldly divisions, but also ethnic, cultural and ritual differences, damage or compromise the unity of the Spirit,” he told them.
There are about 60 priests among about two million Catholics spread across four northern Saudi countries, said Archbishop Paul Hinder, the Vatican’s apostolic vicar for the region. He cited “sometimes very difficult conditions” for those serving the network because of restrictions in some states.
At the end of the service, Pope Francis thanked King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for Bahrain’s “exquisite hospitality. “
King Hamad and Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyeb, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque and university, which is also located in Bahrain, greeted the pontiff at the airport before leaving for Rome, state television showed.
Pope Francis’ stopover, where he closed an East-West discussion organized through Bahrain, continues his policy of ties with the Islamic world after a historic stopover in the UAE in 2019.
But he also drew attention to tensions between Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim monarchy and the Shiite opposition, which accuses the Muslim monarchy of tracking human rights abuses, a rate the government denies.
The pope highlighted human rights in his first speech in Bahrain, spoke out against the death penalty and called for “guaranteeing respect and fear to all those who feel most marginalized in society, such as immigrants and prisoners. “
Foreigners, mostly low-paid migrant workers, shape the backbone of the Gulf oil-producing region’s economies. Thousands of Catholics from Bahrain and the Gulf flocked to a stadium to hear the pope say Mass on Saturday.
Later that day, relatives of those sentenced to death and sentenced to life imprisonment in Bahrain, who crushed a pro-democracy uprising in 2011, staged a small demonstration in the direction of the pope’s motorcade until police intervened to prevent it.
During the East-West dialogue, the pontiff focused on the role of religions in selling peace and disarmament. Earlier, he referred to the “forgotten war” in Yemen, where seven years of fighting have a serious humanitarian crisis Rappler. com.