VATICAN Pope Francis will visit Our Lady of Arabia, heart of Marian devotion

The place of worship opened last year. It has 2,300 seats and a chapel where an image of the Virgin, to whom the temple is dedicated, is preserved. The Pontiff will hold an ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace during his trip to the Gulf. The construction of the church is the result of the mission of Monsignor Ballin, apostolic vicar who died in 2020.

Milan () – It has 2,300 seats and a chapel where the image of the patron Virgin of the Arabian Peninsula is preserved and is surrounded by desert. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia was inaugurated last year and is located a few kilometers from the Bahraini capital, Manama. It will be one of the most significant stops in Pope Francis’ apostolic journey to the small archipelago of the Persian Gulf, which begins on November 3. The ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace, scheduled for the following day, will be held in this great cathedral, which was built on land donated by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. It is located in the Awali area, where many of the migrant workers employed in the local oil refineries live.

It should be remembered that expatriates make up more than half of Bahrain’s million and a half inhabitants. The vast majority of Christians also come from abroad – from India and the Philippines, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and most of the Middle East – and make up around 15% of the population. They come from all denominations: Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Latin and Coptic Catholics, Anglicans and Syro-Malabar.

A multifaceted people that testifies to their faith in Jesus in these lands where, despite the need to adapt to a predominantly Muslim context, the Church is experimenting with new forms of presence and ways of dialogue, including with local authorities. Awali Cathedral, the largest in the Persian Gulf, is tangible proof of this.

The devotion to Our Lady of Arabia was born on December 8, 1948, the day of the dedication of a small chapel in Kuwait. For this reason, she took a statue of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms and a rosary in her hands, blessed in the Vatican by Pius XII. In 1957, a decree of the same pontiff proclaimed Our Lady of Arabia as patron saint of the Apostolic Vicariate of Kuwait.

The devotion was passionately cultivated by Archbishop Camillo Ballin. This Comboni priest (of the Religious Institute of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, MCCJ) originally from Veneto was appointed vicar of Kuwait in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed as the first vicar of the brand new North Arabia circumscription, which also includes Qatar , the Saudi kingdom and precisely Bahrain, where the episcopal seat was transferred that same year. Before his premature death in 2020, the missionary, a profound connoisseur of the region, had asked the Holy See to institute a feast for the Virgin under the patronage of Our Lady of Arabia. The solemnity was established in 2011, on the Saturday that precedes the second Sunday in ordinary time, with the exceptional permission to celebrate it on Sundays as well.

In Bahrain (where the first church in the Persian Gulf opened in 1939) Monsignor Ballin received citizenship and was also appointed a member of the Center for Peaceful Coexistence founded by the king. The bishop also sought cooperation with the authorities in the construction of a new church: from this patient web of relationships, woven over time, came the construction of the new Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia. The church was inaugurated last December by Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa, representative of the sovereign, in the presence, among others, of Cardinal Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Although Monsignor Ballin did not attend that historic day, the Pope’s trip to Bahrain, -with which the Comboni missionary dreamed for years-, will also represent the crowning of his long and intense missionary work.