VATICAN 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.
اضافة اعلان
The Thursday-to-Sunday visit — the 39th
international trip of Francis’ papacy — comes three years after his historic
trip to the UAE 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
Egypt in 2017 and
Iraq last year while pledging high-level interfaith dialogue.
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 central
Bahrain.
The two religious leaders signed a joint document in
Abu Dhabi in February 2019 pledging interfaith co-existence. 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.
Flocking to mass
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, Bangladesh, Morocco, and most recently in September,
Kazakhstan.
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