20 November 2017 A CORRESPONDENT

World Watch Monitor

An old building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, believed to have once served as a Dutch church. PICTURE: World Watch Monitor, 2011

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has reportedly announced plans to restore and re-open a 900-year-old church as a “gift” to the Lebanese Patriarch.

The church is to be used as a centre for inter-religious dialogue, according to Catholic news agency Fides.

The Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros al-Rai, has been in Saudi Arabia despite tensions between the two countries following the surprise resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, in Riyadh on 4 November.

According to the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Alrai, the Patriarch’s visit reveals a “new Saudi Arabia”, where “dialogue between civilisations and religions, between Muslims and Christians”, can take place.

Visits of church leaders to Saudi Arabia have been rare. The country is known for its conservative interpretation of Islam, although the monarchy seems to be taking steps to change this.

There are currently no official churches in Saudi Arabia and the thousands of Maronite families who work there have to live “either as a neutral person or as a Muslim”, one Lebanese Catholic, Danny Nasrallah, told The New York Times. “You have to pray in your heart when you want to pray,” he said.

But Mr Nasrallah said the Patriarch’s meeting with King Salman and the Crown Prince was “a good omen of where the Kingdom is headed”.