The notice went up on Saint Francis of Assisi Church's website two days before Easter Sunday. It read: "All Masses at our Church are cancelled until further notice. Parishioners are requested to refrain from visiting the Church premises, in the interest of safety and community well-being." Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Dubai's Oud Metha posted a nearly identical message: "Please note with effect from 3 April, our church will be closed to all visitors until further notice." Both announcements cited compliance with UAE government safety directives regarding large gatherings. The reason those directives existed was straightforward. Dubai was under active threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks. Jebel Ali, the coastal area in Dubai where Saint Francis of Assisi stands, had been struck by Iranian projectiles multiple times since the war began on February 28.
This is what a modern regional war looks like in practice. Not just artillery and airstrikes, but churches in one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities telling their congregations to watch Easter Mass from home, on a laptop, because gathering in person might get them killed.
What Easter Means in Dubai
Dubai's Christian community is substantial. The UAE hosts one of the most religiously diverse populations in the Arab world, drawing workers and permanent residents from the Philippines, India, Egypt, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, and dozens of other countries where Christianity is predominant or significant. Saint Mary's in Oud Metha — which Euronews described as one of the largest Catholic parishes in the world — typically draws enormous crowds for Easter, with "major preparations made long before" the holiday, according to Euronews reporting.
Jebel Ali, where Saint Francis of Assisi stands, is one of Dubai's symbols of interfaith tolerance. The area hosts multiple churches and temples representing different religious denominations. The government safety directives cancelling in-person services extended to all of them: the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, the Saint Thomas Orthodox Cathedral, the Saint Mina Coptic Orthodox Church, the Mar Thoma Parish, the Sikh Gurudwara, and the Hindu temple all moved services online or closed entirely. Not because of anything internal to those communities. Because the Jebel Ali area kept getting hit.
Bishop Paolo Martinelli, the apostolic vicar of Southern Arabia who oversees the Catholic Church in the UAE, wrote an Easter message to his congregation that did not minimize what was happening. "I would like to express my closeness to you during these holy days, as we celebrate the foundation of our faith, Christ Jesus, dead and risen," he wrote, according to Euronews. "We sincerely hope to return to celebrating together with all of you in our churches soon. It is certainly painful not to be able to take part in person in the beautiful and rich celebrations of the holy week." He also asked all parishioners to "pray incessantly for an end to the war and for peace and reconciliation."
Dubai Has Absorbed More Attacks Than Israel
One of the less reported facts of the Iran war is the scale of what Dubai specifically has absorbed. According to Euronews, Dubai has been targeted by Iranian missiles and drone attacks more frequently than Israel since the war began on February 28. The city — a major global hub for finance, logistics, tourism, and air travel — sits within range of Iran across the Persian Gulf and hosts American and allied military assets and infrastructure that Iran considers legitimate targets.
The Wikipedia page on Iranian strikes on the UAE documents a pattern of attacks going back to the earliest days of the conflict, including strikes on Jebel Ali, on French naval installations near Zayed Port in Abu Dhabi, and even on an Amazon Web Services data center in the UAE. On Sunday, April 5, authorities in Abu Dhabi confirmed fires at the Borouge petrochemical plant caused by debris from the interception of an incoming air attack. Earlier in the day, Bahrain's Bapco Energies oil storage facility was struck. Kuwait lost two desalination plants. Saudi Arabia intercepted missiles. The pattern across the Easter weekend — constant, rotating attacks against Gulf civilian and energy infrastructure — is the backdrop against which the Dubai church closures should be understood.
For a city that built its global brand on stability, safety, and being the region's neutral commercial hub, the church closures are a significant symbolic moment. Easter Mass cancelled in Dubai is not a military event. It is a civilian quality-of-life event, measured in missed rituals and Masses streamed on phones instead of observed in person, and it captures something the casualty figures and oil price charts do not: the texture of what it means to live in a city that has been under intermittent attack for five consecutive weeks.
Easter Observed Elsewhere Under Fire
Dubai was not the only place where Easter collided with the war on Sunday. In Tehran, Armenian Christians gathered at Saint Sarkis Cathedral to observe Easter, according to NPR and AP. In Jerusalem, worshippers marked Palm Sunday at the Western Wall and in Christian holy sites. Pope Leo XIV, celebrating his first Easter as pontiff at Saint Peter's Basilica, called Easter "the victory of life over death" and warned that humans were growing accustomed to violence, "becoming indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people and repercussions of hatred," according to NPR.
Sarah Mullally, the Church of England's first female Archbishop of Canterbury, used her Easter sermon to call for an end to the "violence and destruction" in the Middle East, according to NPR. In Beirut, rescue teams were working at the site of an Israeli airstrike that killed four people near the main public hospital. In Haifa, Israel, search teams were still working five hours after an Iranian ballistic missile collapsed a residential building, looking for four people feared trapped.
Easter 2026 was observed across the region in proximity to active violence. In Dubai, that proximity was close enough that two of the most prominent Catholic churches in the Gulf advised their congregations not to come.
The Bishop's Request
Bishop Martinelli closed his Easter message to the Dubai Catholic community with a request: to stay safe, to pray, and to hold on to the meaning of the season despite the circumstances. "It is certainly painful not to be able to take part in person in the beautiful and rich celebrations of the holy week," he wrote.
The churches remain closed until further notice. On the same day the notice was posted, Iranian drones struck desalination infrastructure in Kuwait. The Borouge plant in Abu Dhabi suspended operations. And Trump posted a profane threat to bomb Iranian power plants by Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened by Monday evening. In that context, the bishop's request — pray incessantly for peace — was the most honest summary of where things stood on Easter Sunday in the Gulf.