Bishop says half of the Christians
in Middle East are vulnerable migrants
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 19 (CNS) -- Up to half of the Catholics in the Middle East are migrant workers, mostly from the Philippines, who pack the few churches in the Arabian Peninsula each weekend and often turn to the church when their employers exploit or abuse them.
Mons. Hinder presides at annual gathering of the Vicariate clergy and faithful in Abu Dhabi last March.
Bishop Paul Hinder, the apostolic vicar for Arabia, is responsible for the pastoral care of Catholics in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
There are more than 2 million Filipinos in the region, and about 80 percent of them are Catholic.
[Clearly, this is the largest-ever 'diaspora' of Catholics to non-Christian lands in terms of numbers. It is a phenomenon that dates back to the 1970s when he oil-rich nations of the Middle East began exporting unskilled labor, skilled labor and professionals - mostly teachers, doctors, nurses and engineers - from the Philippines and other Asian countries, to do work which was considered too menial for Arabs to do themselves (cleaning crews and sanitation workers in public places including airports, or domestics and nannies to service rich families), and the professionals to staff their hospitals, schools, hotels and oil enterprises.
And clearly, too, there will be work for them as long as Arabs are unwilling to do menial jobs and/or are unable to train the professionals they need to keep their societies more or less 'abreast' with the rest of the world. But even if many of them face long gainfully-employed years in the Middle East, sending home badly neededdollars to their families, practically none of them are likely to settle in the Middle East and an all-pervasive Islamic culture that is openly hostile to Christian culture.]
There also are tens of thousands of Catholics from India, Sri Lanka and Africa, he told reporters at the Vatican Oct. 19.
Given that situation, he said he thought
the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East was "too focused on the classical Oriental churches in the Middle East" and on problems facing the region's native Christians because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the continuing tensions in Lebanon.
"The Church cannot distinguish between first- and second-class Catholics" by downplaying the needs of the millions of Catholic migrant workers in the region, he said.
The situation is urgent, the bishop said, because in too many places the migrant workers, especially the women, "are treated as slaves," not just in the Arabian Peninsula, but in Lebanon and Israel as well.
"It's not a particular problem of the Muslim world," but also happens when the employers are "wealthy Christians who treat these women in a horrible way," forcing them to work up to 22 hours a day, preventing them from leaving the house and, sometimes, subjecting them to sexual abuse, the bishop said.
[The Philippine governments since the 1980s have been aware of this general risk to women who are employed as domestics in Arab households and has promoted awareness campaigns to discourage Filipino women hiring themselves out as domestics in the Arab countries.]
The Church knows what happens to them only because some of them manage to flee and the first place they turn is the Church, he said. Church workers take the exploited to their embassies, which provide a safe house until they can be repatriated, but no psychological help or support is offered to them, the bishop said.
In some countries of the region, women who get pregnant as a result of rape "risk the death penalty" for adultery unless they can get married before the pregnancy is noticed or get to their home country to give birth, he said.
The possible exploitation of migrant workers is not the only point Bishop Hinder wanted the synod to recognize, he said. The immigrant communities of the Middle East are actively Catholic, energize church life and often have more contact with Muslims or Jews than the long-term Catholic residents of the region do, he said.
"But, of course, I'm partial because I'm defending my people," he said. "It's my passion to make their reality known."
He said even other bishops don't realize there are so many Catholics in the Arabian Peninsula, and most Catholics would be shocked to hear that
he has several parishes where more than 10,000 people attend Mass on an average weekend.
That's partly because most countries in the region do not allow foreigners -- including the Catholic Church -- to own property, so they can build churches only on land leased to them for that purpose. Usually, it is the country's leader or a member of the royal family who owns the land, he said.
Bishop Hinder said the situation in Saudi Arabia, where there are many Christian guest workers, "is particular," because as the land containing Islam's holiest shrines, it does not permit churches to be built.
[In fact, Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of Oriental labor in the world today.]
Still, he said, since Saudi King Abdullah Aziz visited Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, restrictions have eased on worship by small groups of Catholics in private homes or facilities.
ABOUT THE VICARIATE OF ARABIA
The Vicariate Apostolic of Arabia is a Roman Catholic apostolic vicariate located in the United Arab Emirates. It is a territorial jurisdiction of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church covering the following countries of the Arabian Peninsula: Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, an area of over 1.2 million square miles.
* Total population in 2004: 47,760,669
* Total Catholic population as of 2004: 1,300,500 (2.7% of the whole)
* Parishes: 20
* Total priests (diocesan and religious): 45
* Catholics per priest: 28,900
There are Catholic parishes in all these countries with the exception of Saudi Arabia, where the public practice of non-Islamic religions is forbidden. The current superior of the vicariate is the Swiss-born Bishop Paul Hinder OFM Cap.
It was established in 1888 as the Apostolic Vicariate of Aden and changed to its present name in 1889. The See of the jurisdiction was in Aden until 1973, when it was transferred to St. Joseph's Cathedral in Abu Dhabi.
Formerly part of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Gallas, the Vicariate Apostolic of Arabia was formed as a prefecture by Pope Pius IX on January 21, 1875. It was made into a vicariate Apostolic on April 25, 1888, by Pope Leo XIII as the Vicariate Apostolic of Aden, located in Yemen. On the 28th of June, 1889 the name was changed to the Vicariate Apostolic of Arabia. On June 29, 1953, the Prefecture Apostolic of Kuwait was separated from the Vicariate Apostolic of Arabia. Since 1916 it has been in the care of the Capuchins of Florence, who govern it.
