Interreligious dialogue, one of the most important topics for Pope Francis, will be at the center of his apostolic trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain, which began Thursday at the invitation of local authorities and Catholic clergy. The pontiff flew on an ITA Airways plane from Rome's Fiumicino airport to the city of Awali, where he will be welcomed by Bahraini King Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
On Friday, Francis will attend the closing of an interreligious dialogue forum, "East-West Dialogue for Human Coexistence," which brings together a number of political and religious leaders from the region. In particular, it will be another opportunity for a new meeting with the grand imam of the world's largest Islamic university, Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, with whom the Roman Catholic Church leader initiated the signing of the 2019 document "On Human Fraternity for Peace and Peaceful Coexistence" in Abu Dhabi. Francis became the first pope to set foot on Arabian Peninsula soil at the time. Less than two months earlier, Francis had attended the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Kazakhstan.
According to the distributed program, the forum in Bahrain, which begins Thursday, will be attended by Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov and Hieromonk Gregory (Matrusov), Head of the Patriarchal Experts’ Council for Cooperation with the Islamic world. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is also among the speakers.
Francis will speak at the closing of the forum, meet with representatives of Islam, hold an ecumenical meeting and pray for peace in the local Catholic cathedral. He will also lead a Mass in the local stadium. Among Bahrain's population of about 1.5 million, about 80,000 are Catholics, mostly immigrants working in the kingdom. The oldest Catholic Church in the capital, Manama, where the pope will meet with Catholic clergy on Sunday, was built in 1939. In the absence of the nunciature in Bahrain, Francis will stay at the royal palace. The current pontiff had already met with the king of Bahrain at the Vatican in 2014, when he was invited to visit the country.
On the eve of the papal trip, a number of civil rights organizations, including Amnesty International, drew attention to the lack of respect for human rights in Bahrain, recalling repression after the 2011 protests and harassment by the ruling Sunni monarchy of the Muslim Shia opposition. "It is an ancient land that has been home to different ethnic and religious groups since antiquity, which is why a stay there is extremely valuable on the path to brotherhood," said Matteo Bruni, Director of the Holy See's press office.
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Photo: EPA\TASS
Based on materials from TASS