WASHINGTON (CNS) — Bishop Camillo Ballin, apostolic vicar of Northern Arabia, knows full well what it is like to minister to Catholics in a Muslim region because he has been doing that for more than four decades.
In recent years, the 69-year-old Italian bishop — a member of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus who has served in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Kuwait and now Bahrain — has seen the number of Catholics particularly in the Persian Gulf rise sharply.
He attributes the increase to the growing number of workers migrating to the oil-rich nations for manual labor and domestic service work.
In his territory, the Northern Arabia vicariate — which includes Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — there are more than 2.5 million Catholics.
The increasing Catholic population gives Bishop Ballin a problem not every bishop faces: overflowing churches. In response, he is preparing to build a new cathedral in Awali, Bahrain, called Our Lady of Arabia, which will hold 2,600 congregants.
The current church on the island nation seats about 700. The Catholic population in Bahrain numbers about 140,000, the bishop said.