St. Joseph’s Church in Abu Dhabi was packed on the Friday before Palm Sunday, with parishioners forced to stand along the sides of the church and along the center aisle. Chairs were placed outside the church in order to accommodate the overflow.
Yes, it was a popular holiday, and yes, this is the only Catholic church in all of Abu Dhabi, but daily and Sunday Masses here are always well attended. Masses are celebrated here in English, Tagalog (the main dialect of the Philippines), Arabic, Malalayam (one of the many languages of India), Urdu (the lingua franca of Pakistan), Konkani (another language spoken in India), Tamil (another of the 22 Indian languages), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka’s main lingo), and French.
The English-language Masses are attended mostly by Filipinos and Indians, many of whom live in labor camps and company housing in Mussafah, about an hour away from Abu Dhabi. At the end of the video I’ve attached you'll see a few of the dozens of buses that regularly pull up to St Joseph’s. Most of the people who go to church here don’t have cars and live far away. They pile into buses and travel a significant distance to get to the city’s only Catholic church. I am immensely impressed with their faith.
I often think of the times I went to Saturday or Sunday Mass in Midtown Manhattan. If Our Lady of Peace church on 62nd Street was half-full, that would be a big crowd.
In the video below, you can see where the modest, low-lying St Joseph's Church is located in between a beautiful, towering mosque with multiple minarets and an equally majestic Coptic Orthodox church, all in the same block.
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