I would be very surprised if it turns out as all the news reports seem to be cranking it out as. IMHO, the Nuncio’s cautious remarks were a bit overblown in the media.
I want to say what someone in the Vicariate told me once (I’m not, for personal reasons, going to say who) He said that we don’t want a church right now in Saudi Arabia. The simple reason is that the Saudi people themselves are not ready for one and opening one will only be a cause for alarm for people who have never heard of such a thing. Not to mention extremism and a target for Christians. What we do want, is freedom for Catholics to worship and priests to minister unobstrusively. Then maybe after some years of that situation, we can think about a church.
In fact, the same thing happened some years ago somewhere else (again, excuse me not mentioning names) where the local population were agitated and surprised by the sudden ‘appearance’ of Christians and churches in their midst. It led to a bit of relocation.
