VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis brings his message of discussion with the Muslim world to the Kingdom of Bahrain, where the government is organizing an interfaith convention on East-West coexistence.
The 85-year-old pope, who has been using a wheelchair for several months because of a strain on his knee ligaments, said Thursday he was in “a lot” of pain on his way to Bahrain and greeted reporters traveling with him for the first time. sitting than walking down the hall.
Francis has long presented the discussion as a tool for peace and believes a demonstration of interreligious concord is necessary, especially now given Russia’s war in Ukraine and regional conflicts, such as in Yemen. “The cause of fraternity and peace, which our time urgently needs. “
This stopover is Francis’ moment in a Gulf Arabian country, following his historic 2019 in Abu Dhabi, where he signed a document selling the Catholic-Muslim fraternity with a prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayeb. Al Tayeb is the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning in Cairo. Francis followed with a stopover in Iraq in 2021, where he was conquered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, one of the world’s most prominent Shiite clerics.
Francis will meet this week in Bahrain with Al Tayeb, as well as other prominent figures from the interfaith community expected to attend the conference, which is held last month in Kazakhstan that Francis and Al Tayeb also attended.
Members of the Regional Muslim Council of Elders are expected to include the non-secular leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church and rabbis from the United States, according to the Bahrain program.
The testament will also allow Francis to minister to Bahrain’s Catholic community, which numbers about 80,000 more people in a country of about 1. 5 million more. Most are employed from the Philippines and India, though tour organizers expect pilgrims from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries. countries to attend Francis’ main Mass at the National Stadium on Saturday.
Bahrain is home to the first Catholic church in the Gulf, the Parish of the Sacred Heart, which opened in 1939, as the largest, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia.
The 2,300-seat church opened last year in the desert city of Awali on land donated to the church through King Hamad bin Eisa Al Khalifa.
In fact, the king introduced Francis to a style of the church on his scale at the Vatican in 2014 and issued the first invitation to make a stopover.
Francis will stop at either of the two churches where he made his stopover and will most likely thank the king for the government’s longstanding tolerance of Christians living in the country.
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