Setting foot in what was once a desert land but where today the sand meets air-conditioned skyscrapers, Pope Francis made history. The first pope ever to visit the Arabian Peninsula used his 30-hour trip to the United Arab Emirates to bring a message of peace and to give succour to a growing local church of migrants.

Channelling the spirit of St Francis of Assisi, who 800 years ago sought to broker a peace with the Sultan of Egypt during the Crusades, he modelled a new form of religious dialogue by being accompanied for much of his visit by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb. The pair signed a landmark declaration committing Catholics and Muslims to the path of dialogue, and the foundation document for the construction of a new church and a new mosque to be built in Abu Dhabi in honour of the visit.

In the region that gave birth to Islam, an 82-year-old Jesuit pope seemed to be taking on the role of spokesman for all the world’s religions, warning all people of faith of the “recurrent temptation to judge others as enemies” and firmly rejecting any approval of war, however nuanced. In the clearest possible terms, Francis was setting his face against a pseudo-religious “clash of civilisations” between the Christian and the Islamic world.

“The Lord specialises in doing new things,” the Pope said in his homily at the Mass he celebrated on Tuesday with around 100,000 migrant Catholics at the Zayed Sports City Stadium. “He can even open paths in the desert.” The image of the transformed desert will be the lasting metaphor of this visit, and Francis also cited it during his speech to religious leaders, where rabbis and imams had mingled freely before sitting down with cardinals on rows of white cushions to listen to the Pope’s address.