Pope Makes Historic Visit to UAE.
ALLEN: Pope Francis is about to begin a historic trip to the United Arab Emirates, the first time a Roman Catholic pope has ever visited the Arabian Peninsula.</s>HOWELL: It is historic. The Vatican wants more freedom for the region's Christians and this will be a chance to discuss that with Muslim leaders. Our Becky Anderson has more now from Abu Dhabi.</s>BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST (voice-over): A message to the faithful ahead of his historic trip to the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam and home of some of its holiest sites attracting millions of pilgrims each year. The Gulf also has a Christian past.</s>PETER HELLYER, UAE HISTORIAN AND WRITER: We have evidence of Christianity in Eastern Arabia, including the UAE and Oman, certainly well into the 9th and 9th centuries</s>A.D. ANDERSON (voice-over): Abu Dhabi itself is home to the ruins of an ancient monastery built around 600 A.D., fragments of which can be found at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.</s>HELLYER: It was founded by a denomination called The Church of the East, which is one of the eastern churches, that still survives. So the visit by the pope actually has a local resonance in that there is a tradition here of Christianity that is still related today to the Catholic Church.</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): Hellyer says history suggests that local followers --</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): -- of that church converted to Islam but it didn't mark the end of the Christian presence on the Arabian Peninsula. While Islam is the official religion of the Gulf States and leaving Islam is illegal, in the UAE alone, it is believed there are over 1 million Christians, the majority of whom are Catholic migrant workers.</s>HELLYER: You can't be a trading nation on the shores of a great maritime trade route without learning to develop some kind of tolerance and understanding and acceptance.</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): A champion of interfaith dialogue, Pope Francis will meet with the grand imam of the Egypt's al-Azhar mosque in Abu Dhabi during his trip, a cleric regarded as the highest authority in Sunni Islam.</s>ABDULKHALEQ ABDULLA, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE: UAE is already a role model of sorts. It's the trendsetter for the whole region. Whatever the UAE does, others follow.</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): The UAE is using this visit to shine a spotlight on its carefully cultivated image of tolerance on a world stage while maintaining a more muscular foreign policy. UAE's version of tolerance stands in contrast to neighboring Saudi Arabia, where churches are illegal and non-Muslims can't worship in public.</s>ABDULLA: And tolerance these days are in short supply, not only in this very troubled region but all over the world. It's in short supply in Europe, in America, wherever you go. So the UAE wants to be a leading global force for tolerance. And I think that is the kind of legacy that we are hoping that the pope's visit will leave us.</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): Becky Anderson, CNN, Abu Dhabi.</s>ALLEN: The day's top stories are just ahead. Thanks for watching this hour. I'm Natalie Allen.</s>HOWELL: I'm George Howell. More news right after the break.