Vatican-Saudi talks on churches

[nhboy (Premo)]

"The Vatican is holding talks with Saudi Arabia on building the first church in the kingdom, where some 1.5m Christians are not allowed to worship publicly.

Archbishop Paul-Mounged el-Hachem, one of Pope Benedict XVI's most senior Middle East representatives, said the discussions had begun a few weeks ago.

But the archbishop cautioned that the Vatican could not predict the outcome.

The discussions come in the wake of King Abdullah's historic meeting with the Pope at the Vatican last November.

A Catholic-Muslim Forum was also set up by the Pope two weeks ago to repair relations between the two faiths after the crisis caused by a speech he gave in Germany in 2006, in which he appeared to associate Islam with violence. "

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican-Saudi talks on churches