Short Info on the Church present in Doha, Qatar!  

Posted by Heisan

This is the location of the State of Qatar a small peninsula in the outskirt of Saudi Arabia. Here the ruling family is headed by the Emir Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al-Thani.These small country though majority here are Muslims the Emir issued a decree allowing freedom of religion though for your religion to be allowed you must first register it in there Ministry of Religious Affairs as I've known it and the Catholic Church is one of the recognized religion here in Qatar and has been given a portion of land to build its Church building for the faithful catholics to gather and express their faith. Here the Catholic church is really catholic in the sense of the word because all Rites of the Catholic church are being celebrated here. Catholics present here are of Indian, Arabic and Asian in composition. Catholic Rites here are the Maronites of Lebanon, Syro-Malabarese of India, Syriac rite and the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic. All Catholics here in this small state be it Eastern or Latin Rite is under the administration of the Vatican with a Latin Bishop as its head in the person of Bishop Paul Hinder, Vicar Apostolic of Arabia. But still there is some restrictions imposed on all religions here other than Islam. First christians here are not allowed to put a cross on top of there Churches as you have noticed the plan of the Chruch. Display of the Cross here outside is not allowed perhaps to avoid offending muslim sensibilities(you know!). Second Christians here are not allowed to proselytize as some of our brethren are doing under the penalty of imprisonment and deportation. Anyway we catholics don't proselytize so on the second restriction we are not included only our protestant brethren.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at Thursday, November 16, 2006 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

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