On his final day in Bahrain Pope prays for ‘suffering peoples’ of the Middle East
RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – Pope in his final remarks in Bahrain prays for suffered people of the Middle East
Pope Francis, the religious leader of world Catholics, in his final remarks in Bahrain described the people of the Middle East as affected by different suffering.
He prayed for the suffered people of the Middle East.
According to AFP Pope said:”Let us seek to be guardians and builders of unity”,
Pope Francis making speech at Bahrain’s Sacred Heart Church also promoted dialogue with Islam but pointed to some rights abuses in Bahrain.
He also urged congregants to pray “for Ukraine, which is suffering so much”, and for an end to the war.
He told Lebanese congregants he was praying for “your beloved country, so weary and sorely tried, as well as (for) all peoples suffering in the Middle East”.
Pope in his four-day visit to Muslim-majority Bahrain met both senior Muslim officials and Catholic residents of the Gulf, home to a large migrant labourer community.
On Saturday he held an open-air mass for about 30,000 people, many of them moved to tears by the occasion.
On Sunday, the final morning of the first ever papal visit to the island nation, Francis visited Sacred Heart church in Manama and urged Catholics to be “tireless promoters of dialogue” with other faiths.
Call for unity
“Let us seek to be guardians and builders of unity… in the multi-religious and multi-cultural societies in which we find ourselves,” he said, at the Bahrain’s oldest church which opened in 1939.
His words came a day after police briefly detained relatives of Bahraini prisoners on death row who had protested and asked to meet with the pontiff, according to a London-based rights group — although authorities denied there had been “apprehensions”.
Rights groups have long cited discrimination, repression and harassment by Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers against Shiite opposition figures and activists.
Human Rights Watch has accused Bahraini courts of issuing death sentences based on “manifestly unfair trials”.
In his first speech, on Thursday, the pontiff had spoken of the “right to life” and the “need to guarantee that right always, including for those being punished, whose lives should not be taken”.
This was the pontiff’s second trip to the Gulf following a 2019 visit to the United Arab Emirates.
He also used the trip to warn that the world was on a “delicate precipice”, decrying the “opposing blocs” of East and West — a veiled reference to the standoff over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“A few potentates are caught up in a resolute struggle for partisan interests, reviving obsolete rhetoric, redesigning spheres of influence and opposing blocs,” he said.
The pope was to leave for Rome at around 1:00 PM (1000 GMT).