Pope Francis made history this week when he became the first Catholic pontiff to visit the United Arab Emirates – which is to say, the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam. His presence here gave succour to the region’s often-persecuted Christian minorities, uplifted the more than 120,000 faithful who packed a stadium for Tuesday’s papal Mass and marked a bright new chapter in relations between the Holy See and the Muslim world.
But one thing went unremarked amid all the justifiable enthusiasm: namely, that Francis’s visit vindicated the wisdom of his predecessor’s much-maligned Regensburg lecture.
