Events surrounding Pope Francis’ UAE visit were important

This past week, I delivered one of the opening addresses at a conference in Abu Dhabi dedicated to creating understanding and building relationships and mutual respect among the world’s religious leaders. The conference coincided with Pope Francis’ historic visit to the United Arab Emirates and his signing with the Sheikh al Azhar, Ahmed AlTayyeb, of a document committing them both to working to build “Human Fraternity”.

I was pleased to have been there and to have had the opportunity to participate in these events because if I had to rely on the Washington Post’s nonaccount of the Pope’s visit, I would never have understood the significance of what transpired over those three historic days.

The New York Times was the only US daily to cover the visit - and its treatment was mostly fair. The Times did address the importance of the visit, while still insisting on seeing the combination of the Pope and the UAE as convenient pegs for remarks about the UAE’s opulence, the war in Yemen, the Catholic church’s sex abuse problem, and Pope Francis’ conflicts with his conservative opposition.

All of those issues are important and should be covered (or it may be more correct to say “have been covered many times over”), but certainly not at the expense of diluting the enormity of what was unfolding during Francis’ short visit.

In the first place, the Pope came to the Arabian Peninsula, to a Wahhabi Muslim country, to celebrate mass in a stadium - with 35,000 in attendance inside the stadium and another 100,000+ assembled outside. This was too big and too historic to be dismissed, as some suggested, as a PR stunt by the UAE to “burnish their image as a tolerant society that promotes religious freedom” or as a way for the Pope distract attention from the church’s sex abuse scandal.

How big was it? Just ask the UAE’s nearly one million Catholics. For them, it was not only the excitement of seeing their beloved Francis, it was also a validation of their faith and as a clear a message as could be ever be sent that their freedom of religion is secure in the UAE. What they found especially heartening was the fact that the UAE government ministers attended the mass and exchanged with others the “kiss of peace” as a gesture of solidarity.

These weren’t the first such signs of respect shown by the UAE for the Christian community. In the mid1960s Sheikh Zayed built the first church for Catholic expats living in Abu Dhabi. There are currently 40 churches (and, in addition to Catholics, there are Protestants, Orthodox, and Evangelicals). And UAE government officials frequently attend services on Christmas and other special events. In the face of growing concerns with extremism and violence against Christians, the Pope’s visit and the reaffirmation of official support for the community were deeply affirming.

On the day before the Mass in the Zayed Stadium, Pope Francis and the Sheikh al Azhar cosigned the Abu Dhabi Declaration - entitled a “Document on Human Fraternity”. In that document, both clerics call on their co-religionists to “stop using religion to incite hatred, violence, extremism, and blind fanaticism and to refrain from using the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism, and oppression”.

In his statement before signing the Declaration, Tayyeb urged countries in the region to “Continue to embrace your brothers from Christian sects everywhere, as they are our partners in the homeland.” Christians, he added should not be viewed as “minorities”, but as equal citizens. In his remarks Pope Francis not only spoke out against the scourge of war, specifically mentioning devastating conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, he also echoed the Imam’s call for “societies where people of different beliefs to have the same rights of citizenship.”

The Declaration affirms this point, saying “The concept of citizenship is based on equality of rights and duties, under which all enjoy justice. It is therefore crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority.”

There is no doubt that these two prominent figures meeting and committing to work to promote religious freedom, mutual respect, and full inclusion of all faiths as equal citizens in their countries can have an impact. But the “icing on the cake” was the two day long “Conference on Human Fraternity”- a gathering of 600 religious leaders and opinion shapers that concluded with the meeting of the Pope and Sheikh. Among the participants were Christians, of all denominations, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains.

In recent years, there have been a number of interfaith sessions in the UAE involving the three Abrahamic faiths. This effort, however, was more expansive and its rhetoric was bolder in scope. It was about finding the common ground and respect necessary to build a human family.

NOTE: Dr James J Zogby is the President of the Arab American Institute