About 300 parishioners prayed with and were blessed by Pope Francis this morning at St Joseph's Cathedral before he headed to Zayed Sports City for the public Mass.
He was welcomed by cheering crowds as he pulled up in a Kia Soul before going inside where followers took photos of themselves alongside the Pope.
St Joseph's was the first Catholic church to open in what is now the UAE on the Corniche in 1965. Sheikh Shakhbut, then Ruler of Abu Dhabi, donated the land for it and was present at the inauguration.
The church moved to Al Mushrif in 1983 to land donated by Sheikh Zayed, where it stands today. It is host to an impressive 80,000 to 90,000 parishioners and performs services in Malayalam from India’s Kerala, Tagalog from the Philippines, Urdu, French, German and even Korean.
