Funny paradox between the spirit and the body that Pope Francis showed on Thursday, November 3, the first day of his trip to Bahrain. Visibly weakened, the sovereign pontiff admitted to having ” wrong “in front of the journalists who accompanied him on the plane taking him to Manama to participate in the Forum for dialogue between East and West, organized until Friday 4 in this Gulf country. It is therefore seated that he received the presentations in the device which took him to his destination. A first.
It was also sitting in his wheelchair that he went to the reception reserved by the king at Awali airport. Arrived by car in the paved courtyard of the royal palace of Sakhir with immaculate white walls, he then returned to this chair before speaking in front of Bahraini dignitaries, members of civil society and diplomats.
Weak, conversely, his speech was not. Seated next to King Hamad Ben Issa Al Khalifa, François raised, in a subtle way, the question of human rights and the rights of workers in a kingdom plagued by uprisings by a mainly Shiite population, repressed by a Sunni power. The inhabitants there are almost half from foreign countries, in search of work in a prosperous petro-monarchy.
Previously, Francis took the time to meet behind closed doors with the King of Bahrain. For more than half an hour, the two sovereigns spoke without the presence of journalists. They then arrived in the main courtyard of the royal palace, where twenty-one cannon shots and a ceremonial parade of the royal guard greeted them.
Fight against discrimination
After a brief speech by King Hamad Ben Issa Al Khalifa, Francis took the floor and greeted a country where “people of diverse origins form an original mosaic of life”. A reference to the different nationalities and especially to the religions that make up the population of the kingdom. He called for “fundamental human rights are not violated”. For the Pope, “equal dignity and equal opportunity” have to be “concretely recognized to each group and each person so that there is no discrimination”. And to add, in an allusion to the capital punishment in force in the kingdom: “I am thinking above all of the right to life, of the need to always guarantee it, even to those who are punished, whose existence cannot be eliminated. »
A first political speech in which the pope could not ignore the appeals of human rights NGOs, which reminded him in recent days of the conditions of treatment of dissidents to the king since the uprising of 2011. A revolt whose upheavals of recent years continue to be repressed. The power suspects the demonstrators, often from the country’s Shiite majority, of being subservient to the Iranian regime. In Bahraini jails, twenty-six prisoners are awaiting execution after their death sentence. From this trip, the Holy See is also expecting, according to a Vatican source, the release of Shiite prisoners, including minors. He thus relies on a local tradition according to which the king pardons prisoners during state visits such as these.
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