Pope Francis met with Bahrain’s Muslim Council of Elders on his second day in the country, telling members that peace can only be achieved by moving beyond past conflicts and joining forces to promote the common good. Speaking at the Mosque of Sakhir Royal Palace Friday, the Pope voiced his belief that “increasingly we need to encounter one another, to get to know and to esteem one another, to put reality ahead of ideas and people ahead of opinions, openness to heaven ahead of differences on earth.”
“We need to put a future of fraternity ahead of a past of antagonism, overcoming historical prejudices and misunderstand-ings in the name of the One who is the source of peace,” he said, asking, “how can believers of different religions and cultures live side-by-side, accept and esteem one another if we remain distant and detached?”
In a world plagued by growing wounds and divisions where “beneath the surface of globalization senses anxiety and fear,” the great religious traditions, he said, “must be the heart that unites the members of the body, the soul that gives hope and life to its highest aspirations.”
In his speech to the Council of Elders, the Pope voiced his gratitude to be among leaders who “desire to foster reconci-liation in order to avoid divisions and conflicts in Muslim communities.”

In his first formal appointment in the Gulf nation of Bahrain, Pope Francis on November 3 condemned the use of the death penalty, which is still in force in the country and has been condemned by activists who argue that loved ones were un-fairly killed after being convicted in sham trials.
Speaking to civil authorities and members of the diplomatic corps in Bahrain, Pope Francis in his November 3 speech cited the country’s constitution, which bans discrimination on the basis of “sex, origin, language, religion or creed,” insisting that “freedom of conscience is absolute,” and that “the state guarantees the inviolability of worship.”
These are commitments that “need constantly to be put into practice,” he said, to ensure that “religious freedom will be complete and not limited to freedom of worship,” and that equal dignity and opportunities will be afforded to “each group and for every individual.”
Yet before all of these guarantees, he said, is “the right to life” and the need “to guarantee that right always, including for those being punished, whose lives should not be taken.”
An avid and outspoken opponent of the death penalty, Pope Francis has described the practice as an attack on “the dignity of the human person,” and asked that it be abolished worldwide.

The French bishops’ conference overhauled its agenda for its November plenary meeting to deal with “the anger, shame, po-werlessness (and) incomprehension” they and their people felt after discovering that a bishop allowed by the Vatican to retire actually was disciplined for sexual abuse.
Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, president of the bishops’ conference, announced the changed agenda Nov. 3 and urged his fellow bishops to have as their first concern “the victims, those who spoke out two years ago and more recently, and those, perhaps, who have not yet made themselves known.”
The Archbishop was referring to the case of retired Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil. When the Vatican announced in 2021 that the bishop was retiring, the bishop had said it was for health reasons. No one contradicted him publicly until mid-October, when the Diocese of Créteil confirmed he had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct and disciplin-ed by the Vatican.
The bishops, who were meeting in Lourdes, acknowledged the sense of betrayal felt by people in the Diocese of Créteil, the archbishop said, as well as “the anger, shame, discouragement and weariness of the most committed faithful, deacons, priests, seminarians.” Those feelings, he said, are “reaching a new level, no doubt unbearable for some.”
“All of us are shaken, personally and in our apostolic authority in the service of the Lord Jesus and the people of God, by suffering a collective criticism for a matter that most of us have had nothing to do with,” he said.

Germany’s controversial church tax should be reformed, not abolished, according to Munich archdiocese’s finance director.
Writing in the magazine Stimmen der Zeit, Markus Reif argued that Church members, including those with looser affiliations, should be given more say in how the revenue generated by the tax is spent.
Catholics in Germany are obliged to pay the Kirchensteuer, or church tax, which amounts to an additional 8-9% of their income tax, depending on where they live. The only way for German Catholics to stop paying the state-administered tax is to formally declare that they are no longer Church members, after which they are sometimes denied the sacraments.
Church tax revenues are mainly spent on parishes, for example, on the salaries of sacristans, janitors, and musicians. They also fund the Church’s large central bureaucracy and bodies such as the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the powerful lay group driving the country’s contentious “synodal way,” as well as social and pastoral projects in the developing world.
Analysts believe that the current dynamic of rising church tax revenue and falling numbers of German Catholics is temporary, and that the exodus of Catholics will eventually lead to a sharp drop in Church income. In a 2,300-word essay entitled “Church tax: The most important source of income for the Church in Germany,” Reif noted that the debate about church tax was not new but was “gaining in intensity again.”

Pope Francis met with Muslim leaders in the Gulf-kingdom of Bahrain on November 4 with a message that Catholics and Muslims alike are called to work to promote peace in the world.
Speaking at the Grand Mosque on the grounds of Bahrain’s Sakhir Palace on November 4, the Pope told the Muslim Council of Elders that he wanted to “journey together in the spirit of Francis of Assisi.”
“God is the source of peace. May he enable us to be ‘channels of his peace’ every-where,” Pope Francis said.
The Pope added: “The God of peace never brings about war, never incites hatred, never supports violence. We, who believe in him, are called to promote peace with tools of peace, such as encounter, patient nego-tiations and dialogue, which is the oxygen of peaceful coexistence.”
Pope Francis attended a meeting with the Muslim Council of Elders in Bahrain, Nov. 4, 2022. The Muslim Council of Elders is an international group founded in the United Arab Emirates in 2014 to work together to promote peace, principles of tolerance, address sources of conflict within Muslim communities, and “bring the Islamic nation together,” according to its website.
The council’s board members include Nigerian Sheik Ibrahim Ibn Saleh al-Hu-ssaini; Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Moha-mmed bin Talal; Grand Mufti of Azerbaijan Sheik Allahshükür Hummat Pashazade; and Abdallah bin Bayyah, an influential Islamic scholar who teaches in Saudi Arabia.
Pope Francis told the council: “We who are descended from Abraham, the father of peoples in faith, cannot be concerned merely with those who are ‘our own’ but, as we grow more and more united, we must speak to the entire human community, to all who dwell on this earth.”
Before the meeting at the mosque, Pope Francis spoke privately with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, a leading Sunni cleric and the grand imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo.
Pope Francis with the grand imam Sheik Ahmed Muhammad Al-Tayyib in Bahrain, November 4, 2022.