MANAMA: About 30,000 flag-waving worshippers atte­­nded an open-air mass held by Pope Francis in mainly Muslim Bahrain on Saturday, marked by a small protest by relatives of death row prisoners.

Police briefly detained around 10 people who had protested outside a school where he was due to speak and asked to meet with the pontiff, according to a London-based rights group.

Hajer Mansoor, mother of jailed activist Sayed Nizar Al-wadaei, held a placard reading “Tolerance does not exist for us here in Bahrain!” The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said police had detained about 10 people and released them around an hour later.

The pope, who did not stop to talk to the protesters, was met with dances and flowers inside the Sacred Heart school, where he urged children to “embrace the culture of care”.

The pontiff, leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, is on his second visit to the resource-rich and Muslim-dominated Gulf, home to millions of migrant workers including a sizeable Catholic community. Matricia, a Filipina living in Dammam in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, said she felt “lucky” to be at Saturday morning’s mass.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2022