ShareVATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will become the first pontiff in history to visit Bahrain, in a trip this week that is hoped will cement ties with Islam. The Thursday-to-Sunday visit - the 39th international trip of Francis' papacy - comes three years after his historic trip to the United Arab Emirates in 2019, where he signed a Muslim-Christian manifesto for peace.
The Argentine pontiff, 85, has made outreach to Muslim communities a priority during his papacy, visiting Middle Eastern countries including Egypt in 2017 and Iraq last year while pledging interfaith dialogue with leading Muslim clerics. On Friday, Francis plans to meet with Sunni Islam's highest authority, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque and center of Islamic learning, at Sakhir Palace in the center of the country.
The two religious leaders signed a joint document in Abu Dhabi in Feb 2019 pledging interfaith co-existence between Christians and Muslims. That visit marked the first ever by a pope to the Gulf region, where Islam was born. Francis will also meet with the Abu Dhabi-based Muslim Council of Elders for an "East and West" forum, with Muslim communities in the West, humanitarian crises, climate issues and Muslim-Christian relations on the agenda.
Also on Friday, the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics - expected to be confined to a wheelchair during his trip due to persistent knee pain - will lead an ecumenical prayer in Awali's cavernous Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral, which opened its doors December. The cathedral that seats over 2,000 people was built to serve Bahrain's approximately 80,000 Catholics, mainly workers from southern Asia, including India and the Philippines.
A government spokesperson said Tuesday in a statement that Bahrain "does not tolerate discrimination" and "prides itself on its values of tolerance". It asserted that "no individual" is prosecuted "because of their religious or political beliefs", but pointed to "a duty to investigate" people who "incite, promote or glorify violence or hatred".
On Saturday, the pope will celebrate a mass in a stadium in Bahrain's second-largest city Riffa before an expected 28,000 faithful, according to priest Charbel Fayad. "We are happy to see many Christians from the region," he told AFP, saying he expected worshippers from other Gulf countries. The pope - who concludes his trip Sunday in Manama leading a prayer meeting with Catholic clergy - has visited various Muslim-majority countries during his pontificate, including Jordan, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Bangladesh, Morocco, Iraq and most recently in September, Kazakhstan. - AFP
