Pope Francis

Pope Francis left Rome on Thursday to travel to Bahrain as part of a trip to the Middle East.Christians remain a minority across the wider Middle East but.

The trip comes on the back of another journey to a Muslim-majority country, following Francis’s visit to Kazakhstan earlier this month. Francis is on a four-day visit, the first of any pontiff to the island nation in the Arabian Gulf. Pope Francis left Rome on Thursday to travel to Bahrain as part of a trip to the Middle East.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church is making his second trip to the region in three years.

He will also meet Dr Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar on Friday and address a meeting of members of the Muslim Council of Elders. He will lead a public Mass at the Bahrain National Stadium on Saturday morning and meet parish workers at the Sacred Heart Church in Manama, the Gulf’s oldest. Pope Francis will begin a four-day trip to Bahrain on Thursday, his second official visit to the Gulf following his journey to the UAE in 2019.

Asked if he will raise human rights concerns during the visit, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni cited Francis' frequent calls for religious liberty and ...

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Pope Francis is bringing his message of dialogue with the Muslim world to the kingdom of Bahrain, where the Sunni-led government is hosting an interfaith ...

In fact, the king presented Francis with a model of the church when he visited the Vatican in 2014 and extended the first invitation to visit. They urged him to call for an end to the death penalty and request to visit the country’s Jau prison, where hundreds of Shiite activists have been jailed. The trip will also allow Francis to minister to Bahrain’s Catholic community, which numbers around 80,000 in a country of around 1.5 million. Francis will meet again this week in Bahrain with al-Tayeb, as well as other prominent figures in the interfaith field who are expected to attend the conference, which is similar to one hosted last month by Kazakhstan that Francis and el-Tayeb also attended. But it’s not clear if Francis will publicly embarrass his hosts during his four-day visit, the first of any pontiff to the island nation in the Persian Gulf. Francis has long touted dialogue as an instrument of peace and believes a show of interfaith harmony is needed, especially now given Russia’s war in Ukraine and regional conflicts, such as in Yemen.

Flight number AZ4000 is scheduled to depart Terminal 5 at Rome Fiumicino Airport at 9.40am, Italian time (11.40am in the UAE). The head of the Roman Catholic ...

I will participate in a Forum focusing on the inescapable need for the East and West to come closer together for the good of human coexistence.— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) Users can track its progress [here](https://www.flightradar24.com/ITY4000/2e149922). Instead, he is expected to land at the country’s single-runway Sakhir Air base at 4.45pm on Thursday afternoon. It took over from former state airline [Flightradar24.com](https://www.flightradar24.com/) is follow the flight on the near 4,000-kilometre flight path. [landmark visit to Bahrain](https://www.thenationalnews.com/gulf-news/bahrain/2022/11/03/pope-francis-visit-bahrain/) on Thursday morning, the start of his first visit to the island country, and his second trip to the Arabian Gulf in three years.

Pope Francis arrived in Bahrain on Thursday to start a four-day trip, the second by the pontiff to the Arabian peninsula.

The plane carrying the pope arrived in Sakhir where he is due to meet King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in the Sakhir Palace. SAKHIR, Bahrain, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Pope Francis arrived in Bahrain on Thursday to start a four-day trip, the second by the pontiff to the Arabian peninsula. Pope Francis arrives in Bahrain

It will be the 58th country visited by this Pope during his almost decade-long pontificate.

I will also have the opportunity to meet with representatives of religions, especially Islam,” the Pope said earlier this week. At the end of the second day of the visit, the Pope will participate in an ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, patron saint of the Gulf, in Awali.At the end of the second day of the visit, the Pope will participate in an ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, patron saint of the Gulf, in Awali. This first ever papal visit to the country will last four days.

Pope Francis Thursday demanded "safe and dignified" conditions for workers after arriving in Bahrain, where rights for migrant labourers have been in the ...

On Nov. 5, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass at Bahrain National Stadium and meet with youth. His final morning, Nov. 6, will consist of a prayer meeting and ...

The day will close with an ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace in Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral, consecrated on Dec. Mary Major to pray for the success of the trip through the intercession of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani. After landing in the country, Pope Francis’s first appointment will be a private meeting with the king. Speaking to journalists aboard the flight Nov. There are around 161,000 Catholics in Bahrain, many of whom are migrants from Asia, particularly the Philippines and India, according to 2020 Vatican statistics. On the flight from Rome Nov.

Pope Francis is greeted by Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as he arrives Nov. 3 at the Sakhir Royal Palace, Bahrain. (AP photo/Alessandra Tarantino).

During the 5-hour journey from Rome to Bahrain, the pope made his customary greeting to some 60 journalists traveling with him. The pope's remarks were delivered in the opulent Sakhir Royal Palace, home of Bahrain's King Hamad, who has ruled since 1999. 4 he will offer a keynote address to some 200 interfaith leaders participating in the summit. The pontiff is on a four-day visit to Bahrain. he added, noting that he hopes next week's United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, helps unite the international community in this regard. 3 by appealing to the country to strengthen its commitment to human rights through the abolition of the death penalty and ending religious discrimination. Since then, the country has been sharply criticized for its violent suppression and imprisonment of Shiite protestors, though the government has repeatedly denied such charges. Young people wave flags of the Vatican and Bahrain as they wait for Pope Francis Nov. In particular, the pope singled out the country's recent reliance on the death penalty. 3 outside the Sakhir Royal Palace. State Department, for their treatment of the country's Shiite Muslim-majority population, which makes up some two-thirds of the inhabitants of the tiny nation. Bahrain's de-facto moratorium on capital punishment ended in 2017.

If the Pope has stood out for anything since his arrival at the Vatican in 2013, it has been for his desire t.

It is important to remember that it was the latter with whom Pope Francis met in 2019 to sign a historic document on human fraternity, an aspect that will be on the table again this time. Later, he will address the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue "East and West for Human Coexistence", an event which, together with the meeting he will hold on Friday with the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb, have brought the Pope to Arab lands for the second time in three years. Already in 2019 he made a historic visit to the United Arab Emirates to address a topic that, now, on his second trip to the Gulf region, he is once again highlighting, namely interreligious dialogue.

Pope calls for an end to rights violations during trip to Bahrain, which has been criticised for alleged rights abuses.

But the ruling Al Khalifa family responded by cracking down on dissent and sought the help of neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which sent troops to help crush the unrest. The visit is Pope Francis’s second to a Gulf Arab country, following his 2019 landmark trip to Abu Dhabi, where he signed a document promoting Catholic-Muslim fraternity with a leading Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb. Pope Francis has arrived in Bahrain on his first trip to the Gulf nation, calling for an end to discrimination and human rights violations.

The 85-year-old Pontiff made his comments during his meeting with the authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps at the Sakhir Royal Palace.

Pope Francis Thursday demanded "safe and dignified" conditions for workers after arriving in Bahrain, where rights for migrant labourers have been in the ...