Church in the World

Church returns to Qatar after 1,400 years

Qatar

For the first time in 1,400 years and after 20 years of delicate negotiations, building work has begun on a Catholic church in the Qatari capital, Doha. Dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, it will open at the end of the year to cater for Qatar's Catholic community, writes Abigail Frymann.

The faithful are foreigners - the Qatari Government prohibits conversions of its 750,000 nationals from Islam - and comprise Filipino, Lebanese and Indian workers as well as business people. According to the Arab news network Al Jazeera, funding for the US$15 million project has come from Catholics across the Arabian peninsula. The Catholic Church's Bishop of Arabia, Bishop Paul Hinder, said: "We are expatriates in every sense of the word. The challenge is especially that we are a multi-cultural, multilingual, multiracial church composed of faithful from more or less all over the world."

Permission for the building project came from the Emir of Qatar, Amir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, following 20 years of requests, and despite opposition from extremist Wahhabi Muslims. The church's priest will be Fr Tom Veneration, who said the Emir had "promoted a politics of inter-religious dialogue" but had also maintained the country's strict anti-conversion laws, which were "the only great limit to our pastoral work".

The Qatari Government re-established ties with the Vatican in 2002, paving the way for the building of the first Catholic church since the Islamic conquests in the seventh century.

There are about 70,000 Christians, including about 50,000 Catholics and 7,000 Anglicans in Qatar, according to the World Christian Database. A newly built Anglican Church of the Epiphany opened last year.