I was delighted to see that The Tablet featured an article about St Mary’s Church in Dubai given that it is one of the most established and treasured Catholic churches in the Arabian peninsula (“Catholicism in the Gulf”, 22 April).

From 1978, I was a parishioner of this church for 17 years, and was a teacher in the attached school. I was disappointed that for an article celebrating the church’s fiftieth anniversary and entitled “Desert fathers” there was no mention of the original founding Father, or of the Sisters who ran and developed the school for so many years.

Father Eusebius Daveri, OFM Cap. (now deceased) built the first St Mary’s Church with enormous faith and enthusiasm. The land was generously given by the then ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who also laid the foundation stone on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1966.