Less than a week after returning from a trip to Panama, Pope Francis is on the road once again. After delivering the Sunday Angelus tomorrow, the Pope will board a seven-hour flight to Abu Dhabi, becoming the first Roman pontiff to visit the United Arab Emirates.

The trip is historic, not least because a pope has never been to the Gulf State before, but also because Francis will preside over the largest act of Christian worship ever to take place in the region. On 5 February he is due to celebrate Mass at the Zayed Sports City Stadium in front of more than 100,000 people. It will be the first time a pope has celebrated an open-air Mass on the Arabian peninsula; the day before, he is to take part in an interfaith conference with religious leaders, including the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.

The UAE, an oil-rich federation of emirates established in 1971, prides itself on being one of the most religiously tolerant countries in the Middle East. St Joseph’s Cathedral in Abu Dhabi is located within walking distance of the “Mary, Mother of Jesus” mosque, recently renamed in a gesture to demonstrate peaceful co-existence between the religions.
  
“We think this pope is working very hard to harmonise understanding between different religions,” the UAE ambassador to the United Kingdom, Sulaiman Almazroui, explained to me. “He has a genuine desire to arrive at balanced thinking of acceptance of Islam minus extremism. And Christianity minus extremism.”