Pope Francis landed in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for the first ever visit.
He is in Abu Dhabi for two days.
He met leading Muslim clerics while his stay in the United Arab Emirates and took part in an inter-religious conference on Monday.
The Arabian Peninsula is the birthplace of Islam.
At the inter-religious conference he met the imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Sunni Islam’s prestigious seat of learning.
He also held an open-air mass contact with some 135,000 Catholics residing in the UAE.
Pop Francis also urged the warring parties in Yemen to respect a truce agreement.
He said, the lengthy conflict has made a large number of people suffer from hunger, killings and displacement.
The UAE prides itself on its religious tolerance and cultural diversity.
There are eight Catholic churches in the country.
However, the UAE has been criticised by rights groups for its involvement in a bloody Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.
An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in four years of war and face imminent starvation.
Rights groups have also slammed the Gulf state for upholding a 10-year prison term against activist Ahmed Mansoor two weeks after it declared 2019 the “Year of Tolerance”.
Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, said, despite its assertions about tolerance, the UAE government has demonstrated no real interest in improving its human rights record.
