Christian presence growing in the region
Over the last six years, religious tolerance has increased in the cradle of Islam, the Persian Gulf, according to clerics who live there as well as academic observers.
On May 31, a brick from St Peter’s Basilica, which is being used as the foundation stone for the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia in Awali, Bahrain, was blessed by Bishop Camillo Ballin, Apostolic Vicar of Northern Arabia.
The blessing ceremony marked the start of construction on a cathedral, pastoral centre, guesthouse and car park — on land donated by King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa — to serve the faithful in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
King Hamad met Pope Francis May 19 at the Vatican and presented the Holy Father with a red box containing a scale model of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, which will be the largest Catholic church in the Persian Gulf.
Driving this positive trend are the increased numbers of guest workers who are Christian — primarily from the Philippines and India — and initiatives by wealthy rulers to open up the region to the world.
Foreign workers in the Persian Gulf are employed mainly in construction, domestic service, energy and health care.
And the numbers are mindboggling: In Qatar, for example, more than 1.3 million foreign nationals work for a Qatari population of only 280,000 citizens. Kuwait has about the same number of visiting workers but a larger local population of 2.2 million.
Expatriates
Bishop Ballin said more than 350,000 expatriates in both Qatar and Kuwait are Catholic, about evenly divided between Indians and Filipinos.
Saudi Arabia has the largest number of Catholics, about 1.5 million, which is about 6% of the country’s population. Filipino nationals comprise the majority of Catholics there.
Bahrain has some 140,000 Catholics among a guest-worker population of more than 665,000 and a local population of about 568,000.
The presence of Christian workers has compelled local rulers — except in Saudi Arabia, which Bishop Ballin calls a “particular case” — to accommodate their desire to worship and find community in religious fellowship.
The main challenge is providing places of worship — and a diverse Mass schedule — says Bishop Ballin, who is based in Bahrain.
Although the territory includes Mohammad’s birthplace and Islam’s most sacred sites, the bishop said there is little religious antagonism between Muslims and Christians, except in Iran and Iraq.
“In northern Arabia, we live in a totally other ambience,” Bishop Ballin said. “The problems between Israel and Palestine don’t touch us much. We are in another world.”
Christianity was widespread among Arab tribes in the first four centuries following Christ’s death and resurrection. With the birth of Mohammad and the emergence of Islam, Christianity disappeared from the Arabic Peninsula for more than 1,400 years. It gradually returned, beginning in the 19th century.
In 2008, King Hamad met with Pope Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, and he invited the Pontiff to visit his country.
A few months later, he sent Bahrain’s first ambassador to the Holy See (although the country established diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 2000). The Pope asked the Bahraini ambassador for help in establishing more churches for the growing Catholic immigrant population, and the king agreed, eventually donating 2.2 acres of land south of the country’s capital, Manama, upon which the new cathedral will be built.
Construction on the new cathedral dedicated to Mary will start in October and be completed in three to five years, at a cost of €22 million. Funds are being raised through Northern Arabia Catholic Faith Services and Aid to the Church in Need.
It will likely serve Catholics not only from Bahrain, but also those living in Saudi Arabia, who cross a 15-mile causeway to attend Mass because Muslim religious scholars have interpreted the Quran as forbidding churches in the country where Islam’s most sacred sites are located: Mecca and Medina. Therefore, no Catholic churches exist in Saudi Arabia, and people worship quietly in private spaces.
In contrast, Bahrain was the first country in the Persian Gulf to authorise a Catholic church: Sacred Heart Church opened in 1939.
The first cathedral in the Gulf region was built in Kuwait, on land offered by Sheikh Abdullah al Salim al Sabah, who ruled from 1950-65. Holy Family Cathedral was inaugurated in 1961, just three months before the country gained its independence from British rule.
Kuwait was also the first Gulf nation to establish diplomatic ties with the Holy See, in 1968.
Qatar established diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 2002, when some 45,000 Catholics were in the country, and weekly Mass was held in the school gym at the American school.
Population tripled
Six years later, the Catholic population had tripled, and the first Christian church in the country since the advent of Islam was inaugurated: the 2,700-seat Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, built on the outskirts of Doha on land granted by Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani.
Our Lady of the Rosary was the first of several church complexes constructed in an area of Qatar now known as ‘Church City’ including an Anglican/Protestant/evangelical centre, a complex for three Orthodox churches and an Indian Christian building where some 12 denominations share space. No crosses or symbols of faith are allowed on the outside of church buildings.
What makes this development most significant is that Qatar, like Saudi Arabia, follows the strict Islamic Wahhabi school and, until now, did not allow Christians to practise faith openly.
Another unusual gesture by the Qatari ruling family, with a positive Catholic twist, was an invitation to six top American universities, with special areas of undergraduate expertise, to open campuses in Doha. Georgetown University was invited for its programme in foreign service, including international economics, international politics and culture and politics.
Jesuit Father Thomas Michel, a professor for the last year at Georgetown’s Doha campus, which opened in 2005, said: “This is a tremendous commitment to education by the Qatari government. The core curriculum is the same in Washington and Doha, so everyone has to take theology and philosophy. I teach theology, I teach Muslim-Christian relations and a Bible course.”
Students
“My students are one-third Qatari; another one-third is people living in Qatar, with parents who are Egyptian or Syrian for example; and one-third are international students from places such as Russia, China or Cyprus,” the priest continued.
“The students are smart, enthusiastic and soaking up what we teach,” said Father Michel, who described how impressed he was that students even knew a lot about the Society of Jesus.
Qatar’s commitment to education and jump-starting universities’ capacity for local youth has not been matched by concern for the migrant workers literally building the nation’s economy, according to groups such as Amnesty International.
Overall, according to Bishop Ballin, the primary challenge is achieving unity: “We have many nationalities and languages. We celebrate in five rites in Kuwait and in 13 languages, for example.”
“Every community would like to be alone, with its own priest, separate from the others,” he added. “In this case, we have many Catholic churches beside each other and not one [Roman] Catholic church, although we respect all the rites. So unity of the Church is the biggest challenge for us.”
Victor Gaetan writes for National Catholic Register.