Pope Francis shifted gears Saturday in his visit to Bahrain to minister to the Gulf's Catholic community, presiding over a huge open-air Mass and then meeting with young people to give them a bit of fatherly advice: Don't just Google your questions about life decisions, he told them. Instead, find a parent, teacher or grandparent who can offer guidance.
After focusing on relations between Catholics and Muslims the first two days of his four-day visit to the tiny kingdom, Francis on Saturday was treated to the multi-ethnic diversity of the Gulf region's Catholic community. It's made up mostly of South Asian migrant workers who often leave behind their families to work in construction, oil extraction, domestic and service industries.
Francis is on the first-ever papal visit to Bahrain, a Sunni-led island kingdom the size of New York City that lies off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The primary aim was to participate in a government-sponsored interfaith conference to promote Catholic-Muslim dialogue. But for the final two days, he focused on ministering to the Catholic community, a minority in the country of around 1.5 million.
After the Mass, Francis met with several hundred young people at the Sacred Heart school, which dates from the 1940s and is affiliated with the church of the same name that was the first Catholic church built in the Gulf. The school boasts more than 1,200 students and faculty from 29 different nationalities and a variety of faith groups, including Muslims studying alongside Christians.
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