Thousands of worshippers gathered in a long and emotional ceremony on Saturday for the consecration of the first Roman Catholic church in the Gulf state of Qatar, ending decades of underground Christian worship in this Sunni Muslim and deeply conservative country.
A cardinal presented the parish with a chalice offered by the Pope during the five-hour mass, and many worshippers wept when a relic of Catholic Saint Padre Pio da Pietrelcina was introduced in the church, dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary.
The 2,700-seat church was built on land donated by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, and five other buildings are under construction nearby for other Christian denominations in this oil-rich state where more than 70 percent of the population are expatriate workers.
"I convey very special greetings from the Holy Father to the Emir," said Cardinal Ivan Dias, the envoy of Pope Benedict XVI and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
"Without his precious gift of a land to the Catholic community, we would not be here today," Dias said.
Qatar follows the rigorous Wahabi teachings of Sunni Islam, and like neighboring Saudi Arabia had not previously authorized Christians to practice their faith openly.
A priest operated in Qatar since the 1960s without official approval, and the opening of the church on Saturday appeared to be another sign of Qatar's efforts to open up to the West as it seeks a bid for the summer Olympic Games in 2016.
"It is a dream coming true," said Bishop Bernardo Gremoli, a former vicar of Arabia who initiated the church project more than 20 years ago.
Some 150,000 Christians of all denominations live in the emirate, more than 90 percent of them Catholic expatriate workers from the Philippines, India and other Asian nations.
"It is a wonderful day for us, we have been waiting for many, many years to have a proper place of worship," Indian resident Robert Rodriguez said.
Church estimates placed the number of people at the ceremony at about 10,000.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS