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Tens of thousands attend first papal mass on Arabian peninsula

By REUTERS

FEBRUARY 5, 2019 08:56

ABU DHABI - Tens of thousands of Catholics and several thousand Muslims attended an unprecedented public celebration of Mass on Tuesday by Pope Francis, the first pontiff in history to visit the Arabian peninsula.

About 135,000 worshippers gathered in Zayed Sports City stadium in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to see the pope, who is in the Gulf Arab country to promote inter-faith dialog.

"For me as a Christian, this is one of the most important days of my life," said Thomas Tijo, a 44-year-old from India's southern state of Kerala, who lives in the UAE and traveled by bus in the early hours to get to the stadium.

"We are a long way from home and this is like a comforting blanket. I will listen very carefully to what the pope says," he said, holding his three-year-old son, Marcus, and remembering seeing Pope John Paul in Kerala in 1986 as a boy.

The UAE is home to about half of the 2 million expatriate Catholics living on the Arabian peninsula, home to the birthplace of Islam in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

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