In November, a groundbreaking event took place when King Salman hosted the first official visit by a high-ranking Catholic cleric to Saudi Arabia—the site of Islam’s holiest territories in Mecca and Medina. Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, was greeted warmly by the King, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and Lebanese former premier Saad Hariri.
“I received an official invitation from the King, and I accepted,” said Cardinal Rai. “I was welcomed almost as a head of state. The protocol of the visit was very official.”
Although the visit had been planned long before, it took on much more significance because Hariri had resigned his premiership of Lebanon on November 4 and remained in Saudi Arabia to take part in discussions on religious freedom.
“Saudi Arabia has not recognized the possibility of building churches or practicing Catholicism,” said the cardinal. “The Catholic religion is discreetly practiced in the embassies or in the Apostolic Nunciature, and the Saudis know and pretend not to know.”
In the meetings, Cardinal Rai praised the religious interaction in Hariri’s Lebanon, calling it “a model that shows how Islam and Christianity can live together. Because Christians and Muslims are equal in Lebanon, they jointly manage power and they separate state and religion.”
The cardinal further praised Lebanon as “the light of hope for Christians in the Middle East,” adding that persecution elsewhere in the region has caused them to flee their homelands.
“We encourage Christians to stay [in their homelands],” Cardinal Rai stressed. “We tell them that Christianity has been in the Middle East for 2,000 years. Saudi Arabia was Christian at the beginning, and Christian culture was present in Saudi Arabia for 600 years before Islam.”
The meetings were fruitful as the Saudi king and crown prince showed “great openness” for interreligious dialogue, according to the cardinal. His presence in Saudi Arabia was in itself a sign of opening interreligious dialogue, to which the crown prince responded that “today, times have changed. Islam is now spread all over the world, and we are called to be open to other cultures and other religions.”
Rather than tackling the issue of religious freedom directly, the cardinal expressed appreciation that Saudi Arabia established its center for interreligious dialogue in Vienna—the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID).
