▶ Bishop Martinelli urges people to read and spread message of fraternity document UAE’s Catholic leader reflects on importance of Gulf’s first papal visit
The head of the Catholic Church in the UAE has called on people to celebrate the “prophetic” Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis on his first visit to the Gulf five years ago.
Bishop Paolo Martinelli urged people to remember the “extraordinary event” of Pope Francis’s visit in February 2019 and the signing of a landmark document that served as a decisive guide for relations between religions.
“We want to cry out to the world that it is possible to walk together with people of different faiths, work for peace and promote a more fraternal world,” the bishop said on Sunday.
The Pope’s three-day visit was the first by a leader of the Roman Catholic Church to the Arabian Gulf.
The public mass attended by more than 100,000 people in Abu Dhabi and the signing of the document with Dr Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, are considered momentous events that served as a blueprint for interfaith relations in the region. “This document is a new chapter in the history of relationships between people of different faiths,” Bishop Martinelli said.
“We recognise that we are different. We are called to know each other, to respect each other and to walk together promoting peace and justice, human fraternity and peaceful coexistence, the role of women in society, always safeguarding creation as a gift from God for the good of all.”
He urged people to read the document and spread its message, describing it as “prophetic, a milestone destined to mark the future of relations between religions”.
The document called for peace, serving as a guide for dialogue and collaboration between all faiths to enable the building of a culture of mutual respect for future generations.
Bishop Martinelli asked people to celebrate both the anniversary of the papal visit and the signing of the document that gave a decisive push to inter-religious dialogue.
He said the memory of the Pope visiting a church in Abu Dhabi and speaking to the worshippers awakened a “profound sense of responsibility for the church and the whole world”.
Repeating the Pope’s message of being members of one family, the bishop recalled his words at the Mass in Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City stadium.
“You are a choir composed of numerous nations, languages and rites,” Bishop Martinelli said. He called on the faithful to take on diversity as a challenge so they were enriched by differences in countries, cultures, languages and traditions.
“Experiencing diversity in unity is our primary task,” he said, expressing gratitude to President Sheikh Mohamed for his help in organising the signing of the document.
Appealing for mutual coexistence, the bishop also spoke of the need to create a more humane society and the responsibility to communicate values to the next generation.
“In this dramatic moment in the history of humanity, marked by so many conflicts, we feel the responsibility to spread the spirit of the Abu Dhabi document to everyone,” said the bishop, who lives in Abu Dhabi and heads the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia covering the UAE, Oman and Yemen.
The Document of Human Fraternity inspired the birth of the Abrahamic Family House, opened in February last year, bringing together a mosque, synagogue and church.
“I again invite our faithful to participate in the initiatives promoted by the Abrahamic Family House, which we support with conviction,” Bishop Martinelli said.
The document called for peace, serving as a guide for dialogue and collaboration between all faiths