Just in time for Easter, Christians in Qatar will get their first church on Friday, joining fellow believers in many other Gulf countries who have long been able to worship in their own churches rather than homes or other venues.
An exception is Saudi Arabia, which adheres to a rigorous doctrine of Islam known as Wahhabism. The ultra-conservative kingdom, which is home to Islam's holiest sites, bans all non-Muslim religious rituals and materials.
In contrast, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates host churches that cater to hundreds of thousands of expats and, in some cases, tiny local communities.
Ironically, Qatar also adheres to Wahhabism but it has opened up to other faiths in the past decade.
On Friday, a Vatican envoy is due to inaugurate St Mary's Roman Catholic church in Doha, the first of five that will be built in Qatar. That will give Catholics a special gift for Easter, which is celebrated on March 23.
"Bahrain hosts the first church of the Gulf region, founded in 1906 by American Anglican missionaries," boasted Yussef Haidar, secretary of the Anglican church there.
A number of Catholic and other churches have since been built in Bahrain, and services are held there for followers of denominations that do not have their own premises, he said.
Bahrain has about 1,000 Christian citizens, including a woman member of an appointed consultative council.
But like other Gulf Arab states, its churches are used mainly by Western, Asian and Arab expats who work in the oil-rich Muslim region ruled by pro-Western governments.
Kuwait has about 10 churches, including a recently renovated complex in the heart of its capital.
There are only some 200 Christians -- mainly of Iraqi or Palestinian origin -- among the one-million native population of Kuwait. But the emirate is home to 350,000-400,000 foreign Christians, mostly from India, the Philippines, Egypt, Lebanon and Western countries.
'There is a need for more churches'
Complaints by some Christians that they were forced to rent private residences and turn them into places of worship, prompted the Kuwaiti government three years ago to allot two large plots of land for new churches.
The United Arab Emirates, which prides itself on its religious tolerance and cultural diversity, also has several churches used by hundreds of thousands of Christian expats, mostly Filipinos, Indians and Arabs.
The opening of a church in Qatar reflects "progress" toward greater religious tolerance in the Gulf, said Father Francois Koussaifi, Catholic parish priest for Dubai and several other UAE emirates.
But in the UAE, "there is a need for more churches to cope with the growing number of Christians," said Koussaifi, a Lebanese who conducts Arabic and French services.
"The development of the church has not kept pace with the development of the country," he said at Dubai's St Mary's Church, where the faithful often overflow into the courtyard facing a mosque.
A recent unofficial study showed that an influx of foreigners bolstered the UAE population to 5.6 million by the end of 2006, of whom nationals made up just 15.4 percent.
Catholics are the dominant community in the UAE, where they have seven churches. Other churches include an Anglican one in Dubai, which is used by several denominations, and a Coptic Orthodox one in the capital Abu Dhabi.
"I wish the government would allot more land to build churches. We asked for space to build another church in Dubai four years ago," Koussaifi said.
Reverend Michael Bos, a Muscat-based pastor from the Reformed Church in America, said Indian Catholics form the largest bloc among Oman's Christian community, which is made up of tens of thousands of expats from the Americas, Europe and Asia.
"Some of the mainline traditions -- such as Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox -- have their own sanctuaries," said Bos, director of the Al-Amana Centre, which studies Christian-Muslim relations.
Other congregations do not have churches of their own and use the existing ones, Bos said.
Land for the churches -- including two compounds in Muscat, one in Sohar, and one in Salalah -- has been donated by Sultan Qaboos, Bos said, hailing Oman's "long tradition of tolerance."
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