A church, a synagogue, and a mosque planned together for Arabian Peninsula
When Pope Francis visited the United Arab Emirates last February, he not only became the first pontiff to step foot on the Arabian Peninsula, but he also stood next to the leading religious figure in Sunni Islam and signed a landmark document pledging all believers to work together for the good of all and against religious extremism.
“Now the impossible has been accomplished!” Francis told Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, in an aside heard by a few close aides.
That appears to have been an optimistic take, given the river of unsettling news from the Middle East and around the world since then: rumors of war, fears of climate apocalypse, resurgent nationalism—all of it seemingly exacerbated by religious divisions.
