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Pope Francis held the first papal Mbad in a stadium in Abu Dhabi, the first time the pontiff went to the Arabian Peninsula.
About 135,000 Catholics attended Mbad on Tuesday with some carrying flags and banners from the Vatican as the pope traveled to the Zayed Sports City Stadium, where an altar with a large cross was set up for outdoor service.
Cheers broke out inside and outside the stadium as Pope Francis arrived and pbaded through the crowd in his open snowmobile before mbad. The songs of "Viva il Papa" and "We love you" accompanied him as he greeted the crowd.
Francis, who raised the awareness of Muslim communities as a cornerstone of his papacy, is making a three-day historic visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Mbad celebration is presented as the largest public Christian worship show on the peninsula.
"We have to say that it's really a big event for us that we did not expect," said Sumitha Pinto, an Indian of Indian descent living in the UAE for almost 20 years.
Of the approximately nine million UAE residents, the Catholic Church estimates that about one million are Catholic.
The mbad celebration takes place one day after launching a broad appeal to Christian and Muslim leaders to promote peace and reject the war.
UAE abuse
At an interfaith meeting on Monday, Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb – the great Imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt – signed a joint declaration on "human fraternity" and their hopes for peace in the world.
Francis said religious leaders have a duty to reject the war as he called for freedom of religion in the predominantly Muslim region.
The human rights watch group Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the pope to take advantage of his visit to the United Arab Emirates to highlight the violations that, he said, are currently unfolding in the United States. Gulf State.
According to the group, the UAE authorities targeted critics, political dissidents and human rights defenders subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.
The UAE is also involved in wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya.
The United Nations calls Yemen the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world. This was triggered by the intervention of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies in a war between the government and the Houthi rebels.
More than 10 million Yemenis are now at risk of starvation.
The country is also part of a blockade federation in the region. Along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, the United Arab Emirates broke off diplomatic and commercial relations with Qatar in June 2017, accusing it of supporting "terrorism" – allegation firmly refuted by Doha.
Sheikh Ali al-Qaradaghi, Secretary General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, based in Doha, said that although the union supports dialogue and interfaith dialogue, the Pope's visit to the United Arab Emirates can be interpreted as an endorsement of rights violations and despotism.
The union has teamed up with other rights organizations to call on the pope to demand the release of the prisoners, end his involvement in the regional wars and lift the siege imposed on neighboring Qatar.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
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