The Argentinian Jesuit also thanked the authorities for their welcome during a meeting with the Catholic clergy at the Church of the Sacred Heart in the capital Manama.
“Seeing the faithful of Lebanon present, I assure of my prayers and my closeness to this beloved country, so tired and so tried, and to all the peoples who suffer in the Middle East”, declared the pope in his last public discourse in Bahrain, while Lebanon is the scene of a very serious financial and economic crisis.
“I don’t want to forget to pray and to ask you to pray for Ukraine so martyred and for this war to end,” he added.
The pope further invited the members of the Church to promote a dialogue “with the brothers of other creeds and confessions” in an “interreligious and multicultural society”.
– “Indescribable feeling” –
“It’s an indescribable feeling. We were very close to the pope in the church,” Oualid Naoufal, a Lebanese faithful, told AFP. “I felt an inner peace,” he said, welcoming “very strong words”, especially on Lebanon.
For her part, Grace-Marie told AFP that she came with her relatives “on foot to pray”. “We are very happy to see him. We are truly blessed,” rejoiced this faithful Indian.
The 85-year-old pope left at midday for Rome, where he is expected shortly after 4:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. GMT). During the flight, he will give his traditional press conference to the journalists accompanying him on the plane.
On Saturday, Francis, who met with the authorities and Muslim leaders, celebrated a mass in front of some 30,000 people gathered in a stadium and spoke privately with King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa.
During his visit, he castigated the logic of the “opposing blocks” east / west and called for “that fundamental human rights are not violated, but promoted”. The words of the pope on this subject were particularly awaited by the militants.
Since a revolt quickly suppressed in 2011 in Bahrain in the wake of the Arab Spring, the Sunni power in this country has been regularly accused by NGOs and international institutions of carrying out a repression against political dissidents, in particular those of the Shiite community.
The government assures him that he does not tolerate “discrimination” and has put in place mechanisms to protect human rights.
– ‘No arrests’ –
Shortly before a meeting of the sovereign pontiff with young people in the capital Manama on Saturday, a dozen people demonstrating to demand the release of their imprisoned relatives were briefly arrested, according to the NGO Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), based in London.
The demonstrators, including human rights activists, held up signs at the entrance to the school where the meeting was taking place when they were taken away by the police before being released an hour later, the official said. NGO.
For his part, a government spokesman assured that “there has been no arrest or interpellation linked to the Pope’s visit”.
“Police officers asked a group of nine individuals to evacuate the premises, which they did,” he said, adding that “no additional measures have been taken against them”.
As part of his visit to Bahrain, Pope Francis also met Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the high body of Sunni Islam based in Cairo, as part of an interreligious forum.
The pope’s visit to Bahrain, the 39th abroad since his election in 2013, is also the second to the Arabian Peninsula after his historic trip to the United Arab Emirates in 2019.
Bahrain, which formalized diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 2000, has some 80,000 Catholics according to the Vatican, mostly Asian workers.
