In a gesture intended to improve Muslim-Christian relations Bahrain, which has an immigrant population of 80,000 Catholics, is to allow the building of a new Roman Catholic church. Last month (December) Pope Benedict XVI expressed a desire to see a new church built "because of the growing number of Catholics" in the Gulf state when he received Naser Muhammed Youssef Al-Belooshi, Bahrain's first ambassador to the Holy See, at the Vatican.
Catholics form 10 per cent of Bahrain's population of 800,000, most of them foreign workers from Asia. The Pope met Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the King of Bahrain, last July, and praised Bahrain's "long tradition of tolerance and dialogue".
This year sees the 70th anniversary of Bahrain's first church, inaugurated at Christmas in 1939.
Last year the first Catholic Church in Qatar was opened despite opposition from Wahhabi Muslims who protested that "The cross should not be raised in the sky of Qatar". As in Bahrain, the church at Doha serves Christian migrant workers from South Asia and the Philippines.
Saudi Arabia remains the only Gulf state where churches are still banned. Last year Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, criticised Saudi Arabia for not allowing Christian worship.
"What is good for me is good for the other, so if it's possible for Muslims to have a mosque in the West, we should have the same in Muslim countries" the cardinal said. "This is not the case in many countries."
Cardinal Tauran, who celebrated mass at the new church in Doha a month after it was consecrated, said it was "an example of very good inter-religious dialogue with very concrete effects. In Saudi Arabia that is not the case yet."
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(Source: TTUK)