Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia: the largest Catholic church in the Gulf, built on land the king donated after seeing its model in the Vatican

At Awali, in Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa gave nine thousand square metres of land for this cathedral in February 2013. On 19 May 2014 he presented in person to Pope Francis, at the Vatican, a model of the project, as a sign, according to several sources, of the commitment of the kingdom to tolerance and religious coexistence. Work began between the end of May and the first days of June 2018, to a design by the Italian architects Mattia Del Prete and Cristiano Rosponi, and was completed on 5 November 2021. A stone from the Holy Door of the basilica of Saint Peter was set into the foundations as a sign of union with the see of Rome. The building, described by diocesan sources as the first cathedral built in the Arabian peninsula in sixty years, though this claim comes from a single source that has not been cross-checked, has a modern structure in the shape of a tent, inspired by the biblical tent of meeting, crowned by an octagonal dome. By law and out of respect for the majority Muslim setting, it shows no crosses or other Catholic symbols visible from outside. It seats two thousand three hundred people, besides two side chapels; the total cost has been reported by several secondary sources at around 14.5 million dollars, a figure widely repeated but not traced to a single primary source. The civil inauguration was held on 9 December 2021, with King Hamad present, in person according to some sources and through a representative, Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa, according to others; the religious consecration followed the next day, led by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. According to Wikipedia, more than seventy conservative Muslim clerics signed a petition at the time against the building of churches in the Arabian peninsula, a detail reported by a single source and not confirmed elsewhere. The apostolic vicariate of Northern Arabia, heir to the prefecture of Kuwait erected in 1953, had already moved its administrative seat to Bahrain in August 2012, years before this cathedral existed, for its more central position within the territory of the vicariate and for a more permissive visa policy. With the consecration of 2021 the seat formally became this cathedral, while the cathedral of the Holy Family in Kuwait City took on the role of co-cathedral. On 4 November 2022, during his apostolic journey to Bahrain, Pope Francis held an ecumenical meeting and a prayer for peace in this cathedral, according to a primary Vatican document. The Catholic community of Bahrain, estimated at between eighty thousand and one hundred and forty thousand people depending on the source and the method of counting, is made up largely of Indian and Filipino migrant workers, with Masses celebrated, according to diocesan sources not cross-checked elsewhere, in English, Arabic, Tagalog, Malayalam and Konkani. Some of the faithful, according to several sources, cross the border from Saudi Arabia, where public Christian worship is not allowed.