Bishop Camillo Ballin, an Italian-born Comboni missionary, heads the Roman Catholic Vicariate of Northern Arabia. He is overseeing the first-ever building of a new cathedral in Bahrain, on land given to the Church by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah.

The cathedral, named Our Lady of Arabia, will serve an estimated 2.5 million Catholics-the great majority of them foreign guest workers-in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The new structure will be a focal point for the territory’s 10 parishes and more than 100 underground communities. Particularly in Saudi Arabia, the public practice of Christianity on the Arab Peninsula is severely restricted, mostly limited to the grounds of foreign embassies and private homes. Priests are generally not allowed to appear in public dressed in clerical garb; conversions of Muslims to Christianity are strictly forbidden, while Christians are banned from marrying Muslim women.

The building of the new cathedral signals a breakthrough in Church-state relations and is also testimony to what the prelate describes as “the constantly increasing number of Catholics in the region.” Currently only five formally designated churches serve the 880,000 square miles that make up the Vicariate. Bishop Ballin spoke with international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need on March 17, 2014, the final day of his two-week trip to the US to raise awareness of the cathedral project.

Bishop Ballin sad, “A large number of Catholics in Bahrain obliged me to ask the king for land. The church that we have in Manama is too small. I asked the king for a piece of land in the south of the country and he granted the request immediately. Since the bishop is in Bahrain, this new church will be the cathedral of the Vicariate of Northern Arabia and it will be dedicated to Our Lady of Arabia, patroness of the Gulf. I think he wanted to prove that Bahrain is a country open to all. In fact, there are Catholics and even Jews who are members of the Council of the king! In this region, where fanaticism is strong in some countries, the example of the king of Bahrain should be considered a model of openness.

“The problems in Bahrain are not between Christians and Muslims but among Muslims themselves, between Shiites and Sunnis. I trust in the good will of the people of Bahrain.”   »»» EWTN.com

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