VATICAN CITY: This week Pope Francis will be the first pontiff in history to stop in Bahrain.
The Thursday-Sunday stopover at the 39th foreign papacy of Francis comes three years after his historic trip to the United Arab Emirates in 2019.
The 85-year-old Argentine pontiff has made raising awareness among Muslim communities a precedent of his pontificate, visiting Middle Eastern countries, adding Egypt in 2017 and Iraq last year, while promising interfaith discussions with senior Muslim clerics.
The Pope is visiting Bahrain for the final rite of the “Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence” and to meet with members of the Catholic community.
He will meet with King Hamad bin Eisa Al Khalifa and in the royal compound as there is no Vatican embassy in Bahrain.
On Friday, Francis plans to meet with Sheikh Ahmad Al Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s prestigious Al Azhar Mosque and Islamic Learning Center, at the country’s Sakhir Palace.
The two devout leaders signed a joint document in Abu Dhabi in February 2019 pledging interfaith coexistence between Christians and Muslims. He was the first through a pope in the Gulf region.
Francis will also meet with the Abu Dhabi-based Council of Muslim Elders for an “East and West” forum, with Muslim communities in the West, humanitarian crises, climate issues and Muslim-Christians on the agenda.
Also on Friday, the leader of the world’s 1. 3 billion Catholics, who is expected to be confined to a wheelchair during his vacation due to persistent knee pain, will lead an ecumenical prayer at the cavernous Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia in Awali, which opened in December.
The cathedral, which seats more than 2,000 people, was built to serve Bahrain’s 80,000 or so Catholics, mostly staff from South Asia, plus India and the Philippines.
On Saturday, the pope will celebrate Mass at a stadium in Bahrain’s Riffa city in front of the 28,000 faithful expected, according to Father Charbel Fayad.
“We are pleased to see many Christians from the region,” he told AFP, saying he expected worshippers from other Gulf countries.
The pope, who concludes his vacation in Manama on Sunday by leading a prayer assembly with Catholic clergy, visited several Muslim-majority countries during his pontificate, adding to Jordan, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Bangladesh, Morocco, Iraq and most recently in September. Kazakhstan.
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