Pope Francis’s stand on Bahrain’s death penalty shocked incredulous witnesses last week. His stand will be his trip’s legacy, says a death row inmate’s wife. Francis made his views on the death penalty clear during his first speech in Bahrain last Thursday. He chose the country’s royal palace to address two of the most contentious Read more
The Pope’s 39th Apostolic Journey was to Bahrain last week. It was his first visit to Bahrain and second to the Gulf. He was aiming to further solidify his outreach to the Muslim community and to offer support to Bahrain’s small Christian minority. Pope Francis and the King Francis’s first official engagement was a courtesy Read more
Pope Francis will visit predominantly Muslim Bahrain from November 3-6 to attend an international conference. The Vatican said the pope would visit the Gulf island country off the Arabian peninsula to take part in the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence. In 2019, Francis visited Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Read more
Believe it or not but a funny thing happened at the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran last month. When the new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, denounced the “oppressive” Syrian government, it didn’t go down so well with the pro-Assad Iranians. So, local journalists decided deliberately to mistranslate “Syria”, in Farsi, as “Bahrain”, prompting Read more
The building of the largest Roman Catholic church in the Gulf was supposed to be a chance for the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain to showcase its traditions of religious tolerance in a conservative Muslim region where churches largely operate under heavy limitations. Instead, the planned church — intended to be the main center for Read more
In an atmosphere of regional sectarian tensions, the headquarters of the Apostolic Vicar for Northern Arabia is being transferred from Kuwait to Bahrain, where the royal family has given land for the vicariate and a new church. The apostolic vicar, Bishop Camillo Ballin, said the move is being made because Bahrain is more central and Read more