Bahrain Mirror: Head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Monastery in Ramallah, Father Abdullah Julio, said that, his Holiness, Pope Francis, may not be fully aware of the existing crisis in Bahrain, and hoped that "no government ignores a group of its people."

He added in a speech reported by Al-Wefaq on the occasion of the Pope's visit to Bahrain, "I hope, and I am very certain, that Pope Francis will work so that Manama restores the unity of the Bahraini community and that political exiles over political reasons head home."

"Of course, his Holiness, the Pope, has a sincere desire to meet Bahrain's top spiritual authority, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim," he said. 

"We, the heirs of the ancient Arab Christians, look at Bahrain as a dear part of the great homeland and look at the Bahraini people as an authentic part of our Arab people."

Father Abdullah expressed his rejection of normalization, stressing, "I, a Palestinian Christian cleric, and we as Christian Arabs, are an inherent part of the Arab nation and oppose any kind of normalization."

"The Israeli entity has been able to make its ideas penetrate into the body of our nation, but this will end, and unity will be achieved," he said.

He went on to say that "the Palestinian cause is not the cause of the Palestinian Arab people alone, but the cause of our Islamic nation, and when it is resolved, comprehensive stability will be achieved in the region", underlining that "this long Arab night will end with the dawn of full independence, and Al-Quds will return to be the core of our Arab and Islamic nation."

The father further mentioned the necessity of the unity of rank, saying, "We grew up in a time when an Arab, whether a Christian or a Muslim, a Sunni or a Shiite, a Druze or an Alawite, used to express pride of being an Arab and used to tell everyone, ‘Make it known that I am an Arab.'"

He concluded his speech by saying that "No compliments needed, we look at Islam in its totality. There are Sunnis and Shiites; and Islam is the big house."

Arabic Version