In the Church of the Sacred Heart in the old town of Manama, Father Xavier Marian D'Souza and his staff are making the final preparations.

Cables are laid, loudspeakers set up.

At the end of his four-day visit to the Kingdom of Bahrain, Francis will visit the "Mother Church" of Christians in the Gulf on Sunday morning and celebrate the Angelus prayer there with bishops and priests, religious and deacons.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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The church was consecrated on Christmas Eve 1939, a year earlier the parish had been founded.

At that time, Bahrain was a British protectorate, and as a result of oil production, predominantly Arab Christians came to the Gulf archipelago.

Today, according to the Vatican, around 80,000 Catholics live in Bahrain, most of whom are workers from the Philippines and the Indian subcontinent.

Unlike the perhaps thousand "autochthonous" Arab Christians, they do not have Bahraini nationality. They are "guest workers", temporary Bahrainis - like more than half of the approximately 1.5 million inhabitants of the kingdom.

That's why it's all the more important for them to stick together in their faith, as they see the services in English, French and Spanish, in Arabic and Tamil, Urdu and Bengali.

Most masses are celebrated on Fridays, the holiday of the Muslim majority population.

The church will be closed this weekend.

There will be an open-air mass with Francis in the national stadium in Manama on Saturday, up to 28,000 believers are expected.

In the streets of Manama there is little to be felt from the first papal visit

For the believers in his extremely diverse community, the Pope's visit is "a dream that comes true," says Father D'Souza, a Capuchin monk like many priests and bishops who look after the Catholic communities on the Arabian Peninsula.

For the faithful as for himself, the Pope's visit is a rare opportunity "to be strengthened in our faith in the presence of the Holy Father," says the Father, who has been active in Manama for five years.

So that the presumably unique experience remains in good memory, there is a sales stand for T-shirts, coffee cups and drinking bottles with the appropriate imprint.

In front of the church, the red and white flags of Bahrain and the yellow and white flags of the Holy See flutter in the hot wind.

Otherwise there is little to be felt in Manama's cityscape from the first visit of a Pope to Bahrain - neither in the narrow streets of Manama's old town nor between the glass facades of the skyscrapers.

On digital billboards with changing ads, the smiling Francis has to compete with the discounted goods of a drugstore chain.

For Francis, on his 39th trip abroad, closeness to his flock, which is scattered across all continents, plays an elementary role.

In addition to the Church of the Sacred Heart, Francis will visit the Sacred Heart School in Manama, founded in 1948, in Bahrain on Saturday and participate in an ecumenical encounter and prayer for peace on Friday at the new Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia.

The cathedral with space for 2,300 worshipers in Awali, located about twenty kilometers south of Manama, was consecrated by Cardinal Luis Tagle last December.

The royal family of Al Khalifa made the property available for the construction of the church, and Italian handicraft businesses were responsible for the interior design of the building, which cost around 25 million euros.

Downhole pumps for oil production are still within sight of the cathedral.