Abu Dhabi: Pope Francis, the first leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics to visit the Arabian Peninsula, will attend an interfaith meeting in the UAE on Monday.
The pontiff arrived in a modest black Kia at Abu Dhabi's presidential palace, where he was welcomed with a lavish military parade.
Officers fired 21 shots in the air, while jets flew overhead leaving white and yellow trails - the colours of the Vatican City flag.
The pope's 48-hour visit to the United Arab Emirates will also include an open-air mass on Tuesday for 135,000 of the country's million Catholic residents, set to be the largest public gathering in the country's history.
The pope was expected to hold talks with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Shaikh Mohammed said on Monday that UAE rulers were "delighted" to meet the pontiff "in our homeland of tolerance".
"We discussed enhancing co-operation, consolidating dialogue, tolerance, human co-existence and important initiatives to achieve peace, stability and development for peoples and societies," he tweeted.
Pope Francis, who made history when he touched down in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night, said he came "as a brother, in order to write a page of dialogue together, and to travel paths of peace together".
To mark the occasion, the pontiff offered the crown prince a framed medallion of the meeting between St Francis Assisi - the pope's namesake - and the Sultan of Egypt Malek al-Kamel, in 1219.
Shaikh Mohammed, in turn, offered a deed for the plot of land on which the first church in the UAE was built.
The pope was set to meet with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb - imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar - later Monday.
Hours before he flies back to Rome on Tuesday, the pope will lead a mass at a stadium in the capital.
The UAE has dubbed 2019 its "year of tolerance".
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