Kuwait Times Newspaper 30th April

Catholics hope Amir's visit with Pope will secure their home
Published Date: April 29, 2010

KUWAIT: The inclusion of the Vatican in a state trip by His Highness the Amir to Europe that began this week has left Kuwait's Catholics praying for an announcement that will secure the future of their church and relieve overcrowding that they say is putting their congregations at risk. The Amir was in Germany earlier this week and will also visit Italy and the Vatican during his tour.

The possibility of a meeting with the pope has raised hopes among Kuwait's 350,000 Catholics that Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al- Sabah will use the opportunity to renew a 50-year lease for church land, which was given to the church by former Amir, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah and is due to expire in 2016.

Bishop Camillo Ballin, the spiritual leader of Kuwait's Catholics, who has worked in the Middle East for 41 years, including five in Kuwait, said: "I'm trying to see what might happen after six years.

Bishop Ballin said the Vatican never invites other states to visit so the Kuwaiti delegation must have asked to meet the Pope. He said he is not involved in discussions about what the two leaders will discuss, but "we hope that the contract will be renewed for 50 more years".

A diplomatic source close to the issue believes the Amir might use the visit to announce something related to the Kuwaiti churches. He said this "could be the moment of truth" for the Catholic community in Kuwait.

Bishop Ballin said: "I hope to keep this land and besides that to have other land, especially in the boundaries in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, because there are many thousands of Catholics and they need a place otherwise they are lost.

We don't ask for privileges, we don't ask to have special laws, special agreements, we just ask to be able to pray." The church has not asked for the lease to be renewed yet, "because this procedure should start one year before the expiry", Bishop Ballin said. He believes the church's location is coveted by owners of hotels and restaurants.

Two of Kuwait's churches - Evangelical and Catholic - are built on prime sites near the capital's coast. Another Catholic and an Anglican church are built far from the city centre in Ahmadi on land that is owned by Kuwait Oil Company. The government recently relocated the Coptic Orthodox from the city centre to the suburbs because of construction and compensated it with a grant of land 10 times the size of the previous plot. The Armenian and Greek Orthodox denominations also worship in rented villas in the
city.

Representatives of the Evangelical Church were unavailable for comment about their lease. Archbishop Petar Rajic is the apostolic nuncio to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE and apostolic delegate in the Arabian Peninsula, making him in effect the Vatican's ambassador to the region. The Archbishop declined to answer questions related to the leases because "I do not feel competent to do so", but did say that the Amir's visit would be "beneficial for both sides".

Another major concern for all of Kuwait's 460,000 Christians is that they are vying for space in existing places of worship. At the Catholic Church on Sunday, several hundred crammed inside for the service while hundreds more gathered on the grounds, ready to file in as soon as the previous congregation left.

Bishop Ballin said his church hosts 28 services on Saturday and Sunday and a total of 46 every week. He said the church is built on 5,000 square meters of land, but it needs at least 40,000. Two years ago, he requested more land from the Amir, but did not receive a reply, he said.

If panic is caused in the church, we will have hundreds of people die. So we are just asking the country for a place to pray: to pray for the country, to pray for the Amir ... We don't want anything else," he said.

Any move to give the country's Christians more land will not be received well by some of Kuwait's Islamists, who believe that no non-Muslim places of worship should be built in Kuwait.

Many other denominations use the grounds of the city centre's two churches. Father Jose Mathew, the spiritual leader of Kuwait's 10,000-strong Indian Orthodox community, which mostly comes from Kerala, hosts two services a week in the Evangelical Church. He said 83 other congregations share the church's two main halls and several smaller rooms.

At a flat in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh under two large pictures of the long, white-bearded supreme head of his church, Baselios Marthoma Didymus I, Father Mathew said a lack of space in his services forces most of his congregation to stand outside the church, and they cannot hold many of their traditional celebrations and feasts because their allotted time is not enough.

Most of the people are hesitating to come. They are coming with their families and they are not getting space inside the church, so they feel that they should stay and pray in their homes. They have the basic right to worship," he said.

Some of the country's largest Christian communities, including Catholics, Copts, Protestants, Armenian and Greek Orthodox, voice their concerns through the Christian Council Forum, which is also attended by a Kuwaiti Christian, Rev Amanuel Ghareb.

Father Mathew said the group met in December and voiced concerns over a lack of space, and Rev Ghareb promised to bring the issue up when he met the Amir, but he has not yet heard a reply. The reverend declined to comment on anything related to the leases or new land. "We hope and pray" the Amir will announce something on his visit to the Vatican, Father Mathew said.