World on ‘precipice’, says Pope as he meets grand imam in Bahrain

Awali, Bahrain (AFP):

Pope Francis warned the world is on the edge of a “delicate precipice” and buffeted by “winds of war” as he held inter-faith talks with one of Islam’s top leaders in Bahrain on Friday.

The 85-year-old Argentine decried the “opposing blocs” of East and West, a veiled reference to the standoff over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in a speech to religious leaders in the tiny Gulf state.

“We continue to find ourselves on the brink of a delicate precipice and we do not want to fall,” he told an audience including Bahrain’s king and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar mosque.

“A few potentates are caught up in a resolute struggle for partisan interests, reviving obsolete rhetoric, redesigning spheres of influence and opposing blocs,” he added.

“We appear to be witnessing a dramatic and childlike scenario: in the garden of humanity, instead of cultivating our surroundings, we are playing instead with fire, missiles and bombs.”

While most of his engagements earlier had been with senior officials, on Friday afternoon he led an ecumenical service in a new cathedral near Manama, attended by hundreds of migrant workers.

The Pope’s visit, aimed at strengthening relations with Islam, comes with the Ukraine war in its ninth month, and as tensions grow on the Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait.

Francis, who is on his second visit to the wealthy Gulf, later met privately with al-Tayeb, with whom he signed a Muslim-Christian manifesto for peace in the United Arab Emirates in 2019.