Saudi Arabia: Where Carrying The Rosary Is A Crime

EWTN News - Camille Eid, a professor at the University of Milan, describes the persecution Christians endure in Saudi Arabia. Eid, who has lived in Jeddah-- the nation’s second-largest city-- told the television program “Where God Weeps” that it is hard to be a lay Catholic in Saudi Arabia because you have to have a very deep background in your faith. You cannot have copies of the Gospel in your home. You cannot have a rosary. You cannot have contact with your Christian friends as a community; you can have Christian friends, you can frequent the foreign communities but you are prohibited from talking about your faith … In other Islamic countries Friday is a holiday so Mass as a community [is allowed], but not on Sunday because Sunday is considered a working day; but even this is not the case in Saudi Arabia.

“We have a case of the martyrdom of a Saudi girl who converted to Christianity,” Eid adds. “Her brother discovered her. She wrote a poem to Christ and she had her tongue cut, she disappeared and was later found dead. Her name was Fatima Al-Mutairi and this happened in August of 2008. In 2008 two cases of raids by the religious police saw men, women and children less than three years old arrested. We have many reports of torture.”