Pope Francis left Rome on Thursday morning on board a special flight to Bahrain, on the peninsula of the Persian Gulf, for a three-day ecumenical visit with high-level representatives from the Muslim world. Since he walks better every day, he will try avoid the wheelchair as much as possible and only helps with the stick. She happily commented on it before her departure.

Jorge Bergoglio brings his message of dialogue with the Muslim world to the kingdom of Bahrain this Thursday, where he will meet an inter-religious conference to promote coexistence between confessions.

Bahrain is a monarchy of 1.8 million inhabitants ruled by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa who leads the Sunnis, while the majority of Shiites complain of suffering harsh discrimination. A statement assured that “the Kingdom does not tolerate discrimination, persecution or division based on ethnicity, culture or faith”.

Nine organizations on Tuesday called on the Pope to publicly ask that Bahrain “the abolition of the death penalty and put an end to all executions ”.

It is the Pope’s second trip to the region after the year visit in 2019 in the United Arab Emirates, in which he launched a message of coexistence between religions.

During the Angelus, which he prayed last Tuesday in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the Argentine pontiff expressed the hope that “every meeting will be an opportunity to support in the name of God the cause of fraternity and peace, which we urgently need today” .

A Catholic community of 80,000 people

The Pope will deliver seven speeches in Bahrain, where they are a Catholic community of 80,000 peoplemany of them immigrants from the Philippines and India.

The Pope will preside over an ecumenical prayer on Friday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, the largest Catholic church in the country. On Saturday the Pope will celebrate a mass in a stadium which should be attended by 30 ml of Catholics.

His first act will be to meet King Al Khalifa and speak before the country’s authorities. It is expected to make a clear mention of human rights.

On Friday he will speak at the closing of the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue, meet the Council of Muslim Elders at the Skhir Royal Palace mosque and hold an ecumenical meeting.

The most important religious encounter with a Muslim personality will be reunification the grand imam of Alzhar University in Cairothe highest authority of the Sunni majority of Muslim faith, Sheikh Ahmed l-Tayeb.

between the two was born a true friendship fruit of their personal encounters.

They will also participate in religious gatherings Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of Orthodox Christiansa representative of the Russian Orthodox Church and a delegation of American rabbis.

The Pope and Imam Al-Tayed also met a month ago in Kazakhstan in another international meeting of religious.

Bergoglio has assumed a unique role in the world of defending dialogue as an instrument of peace and invites religions to show signs of harmony.

Shortly before setting out on his journey, he asked for prayer so that his journey would promote “the cause of fraternity and peace that our time urgently and badly needs”.

Since his election in March 2013, Francis traveled to a dozen countries with a Muslim majority, including Jordan, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Bangladesh, Morocco and Iraq.

Francis is the first Bishop of Rome to visit Bahrain. This is the second time he has visited a Gulf country. In the United Arab Emirates, in 2019 he signed the historic document on human fraternity with the Imam of Al-Azar, Mohamed Al Tayyeb, whom he meets here for the fifth time.

After the scheduled meetings, on Sunday 6 he will hold a prayer meeting and recite the Angelus with the consecrated bishops and priests and then return to Rome, where he should arrive at five in the afternoon, 13 in Argentina.

Vatican correspondent

ap