Pope Francis, leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, flies on Thursday to the Gulf state of Bahrain to foster ties with Islam in a voyage overshadowed by criticism of human rights abuses. The second voyage by a pope to the Arabian Peninsula after Francis’s 2019 trip to the United Arab Emirates is similarly aimed at encouraging interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians, and will include the pontiff leading a prayer for peace at a vast modern cathedral opened last year. But criticism of Bahrain’s human rights record has already erupted ahead of Francis’s voyage, which lasts throug…