Construction Begins for $15 Million Arabian Church

By Ethan Cole, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Construction has begun for a multi-million dollar church in the desert of the small Arabia Gulf state of Qatar where native inhabitants are almost entirely Muslim.

The new Catholic Church will serve as the house of worship for the country's large population of Christian migrant workers, reported the Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera on Saturday.

"We have to accept that we are expatriates in every sense of the word," said the Bishop Paul Hinder, the Catholic Church's Bishop of Arabia, to Al Jazeera, referring to congregants of Arab churches. "We are a pure pilgrimage church."

Hinder noted that despite the difficulties of being a Christian in the Arab world – such as not being able to freely worship and gather – the believers are often more active in their faith than when they are in their homeland; most of the two million expatriate Christians attending the services are Filipino, Lebanese and Indian.

For example, he pointed out that church attendance on the Arabian peninsula regularly outnumbers congregations in Europe and even in the United States.

"The challenge is especially that we are a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-racial church composed of faithful [people] from more or less all over the world," commented Hinder.

There are about 70,000 Christians, consisting of about 7,000 Anglicans and 50,000 Catholics in Qatar, according to the World Christian Database.

Christianity was brought to the Gulf States by missionaries in the second half of the 5th century but disappeared almost completely in the Gulf Arab states with the arrival of Islam in the 7th century.

It was not until 2006 that Qatar witnessed its first church building in 14 centuries with the opening of the Church of the Epiphany. The land for the Anglican Church center – which includes conference facilities, temporary living accommodations, a library, and a café - was donated by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

The $15 million Roman Catholic Church – which is being funded by Catholics throughout the Arabian Peninsula – is scheduled to open at the end of this year.