Pope Francis departed Bahrain on Sunday after a four-day trip that culminated in a visit to the Gulf’s oldest Catholic church, where he told bishops, priests and nuns to remain united as they ministered to the faithful in the area. Muslim majority.
The last event was at the Sacred Heart church, built in 1939 on land donated by the then ruler, putting Bahrain on a path to becoming one of the most welcoming countries in the region for non-Muslims.
Bahrain has two Catholic churches, including a modern cathedral which is the largest church on the Arabian Peninsula, and has around 160,000 Catholics, most of them foreign workers. Many Catholics also visit neighboring Saudi Arabia, which prohibits public worship by non-Muslims.
Francis, who suffers from a knee condition that forced him to use a wheelchair during the trip, told local Catholic leaders to avoid factions, bickering and gossip.
“Worldly divisions, but also ethnic, cultural and ritual differences, cannot harm or compromise the unity of the Spirit,” he said.
There are about 60 priests working among some 2 million Catholics spread across four countries in northern Arabia, said Bishop Paul Hinder, the Vatican’s vicar apostolic for the area, citing at times “very difficult conditions” for those serving the community. due to restrictions in some states.
At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis thanked King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for the “excellent hospitality” of Bahrain.
King Hamad and Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyeb, grand imam of the Egyptian Al-Azhar mosque and university, who was also in Bahrain, greeted the pontiff at the airport before departing for Rome, state TV showed.
Improve ties with the Islamic world
Pope Francis’ visit, where he ended an East-West dialogue organized by Bahrain, continues his policy of improving ties with the Islamic world after a historic visit to the UAE in 2019.
But he also drew attention to tensions between Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim monarchy and the Shiite opposition, which accuses the government of overseeing human rights abuses, a charge the authorities deny.
The pope stressed human rights in his first speech in Bahrain, speaking out against the death penalty and calling for “to ensure respect and concern for all those who feel most on the fringes of society, such as immigrants and prisoners”.
Foreigners, mainly poorly paid migrant workers, form the backbone of the oil-producing region’s economies. Thousands of Catholics in Bahrain and across the Gulf flocked to a stadium to hear the Pope say Mass on Saturday.
Later that day, relatives of death row inmates and life inmates in Bahrain, who created a pro-democracy uprising in 2011, held a small protest along the pope’s motorcade route until police intervened to quell he.
In the East-West dialogue, the pontiff focused on the role of religions in promoting peace and disarmament. He previously addressed the “forgotten war” in Yemen, where seven years of conflict caused a terrible humanitarian crisis.
Source: CNN Brasil
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