Some 30,000 people attended Pope Francis’ mass in Bahrain on Saturday, the third day of his unprecedented visit to the Muslim Gulf kingdom marked by a brief arrest of human rights activists during a demonstration, according to an NGO.
In the afternoon, shortly before a meeting of the Argentine sovereign pontiff with young people in the capital Manama, a dozen people were briefly arrested while demonstrating to demand the release of their imprisoned relatives, the AFP Sayed Alwadaei, director of the NGO Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), based in London.
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These demonstrators, including human rights activists like Hajar Mansour, 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 about an hour later. later, Alwadaei said. The pope, who was not in direct contact with them at the time, was received with dances and flowers at the Sacred Heart School in Manama, where he called on young people to “dialogue“.
“Popemobile”
Since the 2011 revolt, in the wake of the Arab Spring, Bahrain has been regularly accused by NGOs and international institutions of carrying out a fierce repression against political dissidents, in particular those from the Shiite community, in a country ruled by a Sunni dynasty. . The government, for its part, assures us that it does not tolerate “discriminationand have human rights protection mechanisms in place.
On Saturday morning, some 30,000 people of 111 nationalities, according to the authorities, gathered at Bahrain’s national stadium in Riffa, the largest stadium in the country, south of Manama, to attend the Pope’s mass. The latter greeted the crowd aboard his “Popemobile“, kissing and blessing babies on his way before delivering a homily in Spanish.
Marguerite Heida, 63, said to herself “lucky“to attend the”biggest event of the year“. “People usually go to Italy to see the Pope and don’t always get there. I saw him yesterday at church and I will see him today. I was also able to shake his hand and get his blessing“, confided this Christian from Bahrain. The kingdom, which formalized diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 2000, has some 80,000 Catholics according to the Vatican, mostly Asian workers.