Why Pope Francis wants to visit this Islamic monarchy

Three intertwined stories set the stage for a possible papal trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain in November this year: that of a missionary bishop, a Marian devotion, and a Muslim country open to Christians.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia was inaugurated on Dec. 10, 2021. It was the dream of a visionary bishop, Camillo Ballin, who died April 12, 2020, after spending about 50 years in Arab countries.

Ballin was behind the ambitious construction of a worship building for 2,300 people, some 12 miles from the Bahraini capital Manama, with the king’s permission, on land donated by the king.

If Pope Francis’ trip to Bahrain will take place in November — the journey is being considered, said the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, on his return from Kazakhstan — it will be to visit this cathedral.

In doing so, the pope would also pay homage to the late bishop behind the project.

Pope Francis was invited to Bahrain as early as 2014 but then preferred to go to the United Arab Emirates in 2019 to sign the Declaration for Human Fraternity.

The pope’s decision had also been concern for Ballin. The pope showed that he privileged the dialogue with Sunni Islam, putting aside Shiite Islam practiced in Bahrain.

He wasn’t alone in seeing this risk.

For the pope’s trip to Iraq in March 2020, Cardinal Raffael Sako, patriarch of the Chaldeans, worked very hard for the pope to meet Ayatollah al Sistani, building a bridge to Shiite Islam.

The meeting took place, and on Feb. 3, 2020, one year after the Declaration of Human Fraternity signing, Salman Bin al-Khalifa, crown prince of Bahrain, had an audience with Pope Francis.

The decisive contact to make the possibility of the visit more concrete, however, was the inauguration of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia.