Pope Francis who is in the Gulf country to promote inter-faith dialogue has become the first pontiff to deliver mass in the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam.
The mass, delivered in front of some 135,000 attendees at Zayed Sports City stadium in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, comes as a highlight of the pope’s historic visit to the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE hosts about half of the two million expatriate Catholics living on the peninsula, home to the birthplace of Islam in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The community includes large numbers of people from the Philippines and India.
“It is most certainly not easy for you to live far from home, missing the affection of your loved ones, and perhaps also feeling uncertainty about the future,” the pope said, telling those gathered to draw inspiration from Saint Anthony the Abbot, the founder of monasticism in the desert.
“The Lord specializes in doing new things; he can even open paths in the desert,” he said at the end of a trip where he met with the grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque and UAE leaders.
Francis entered the stadium in a white open top jeep to roars from the crowd. People wearing white baseball caps emblazoned with the visit logo packed the stadium stands and snapped pictures on their smartphones.
Thousands of people cheering and waving Vatican flags lined the entrance to the stadium, with the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and Abu Dhabi’s skyscrapers glinting in the distance.