(CNN) Pope Francis is set to arrive in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday night, making him the first pontiff to visit an Arab Gulf state. In a video address from the Vatican on Thursday, Pope Francis said the trip marked "a new page in the history of relations between religions, confirming that we are brothers and sisters, even though we are different." The overwhelming majority of Emiratis are Muslim, but the country hosts a large expatriate population, some 1.2 million of whom are Christian. The trip culminates with a papal mass at the Zayed Sports City, expected to be the single largest gathering the country, with about 135,000 attendees. An hour before leaving on his historic trip, the Pope prayed publicly for the "exhausted, hungry" victims of the war in Yemen.

Source: CNN February 03, 2019 14:26 UTC