History was marked as pope John paul II jetted into UAE. The state celebrates the historic visit by Pope Francis, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church who took part in the Human Fraternity Meeting. His visit retells the UAE’s incorporation of the values of love and tolerance as the pathways for peace and security. The Human Fraternity Conference that kicked off in Abu Dhabi on Sunday is a rare global alliance that will reaffirm the values of tolerance and fight destructive forces like terrorism, extremism and hate, said Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of State for Tolerance.
#PopeFrancis arrives at Zayed Stadium, where thousands of people have waited hours to meet him. #PopeFrancisInUAE https://t.co/4bY0SZiNNY
— Dubai One (@DubaiOneTV) February 5, 2019
The Pope told diplomats that his journeys to the United Arab Emirates and Morocco “represents two important opportunities to advance inter-religious dialogue and mutual understanding between the followers of both religions in this year that marks the 800th anniversary of the historic meeting between St Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil.” The Pope believes that he is following in St Francis’s footsteps by pursuing dialogue with the Islamic world at a time of violence and upheaval. Long before he was elected to the papacy, he sought to strengthen Catholic-Muslim relations.
One of the reasons that Pope Francis is highly regarded in the Muslim world is that he has consistently denied any connection between Islam and violence. He believes that the Pope’s task is to deepen relations with the Islamic world, rather than to analyse and denounce its pathologies. Time will tell whether his emphasis is the right one. In the document signed by Pope Francis and Ahmed el-Tayeb on Monday in the United Arab Emirates, the two leaders issue a strong condemnation of terrorism and violence: “God does not want his name to be used to terrorize people”.
The UAE witnessed a historic moment as Pope Francis celebrated the first ever Papal Mass in the Arabian Peninsula. The Papal Mass was available to travellers on over 95 airborne Emirates flights across 40,000 ice TV Live screens. The was celerated on Tues 10:30am local time ; with 1 million Catholics in the Peninsula Nation, tickets had been in heavy demand. The Mass site was Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City that was expected to seat 135,000 people.