c. 2000 Religion News Service

AMMAN, Jordan _ Chanting “God bless you” and “Hallelujah,” some 40,000 Jordanians greeted Pope John Paul II at a mass in Ammans Al Hussein sports stadium Tuesday (March 21), on the second day of his pilgrimage and peace mission to the region.

The Mass, devoted largely to the theme of baptism, was followed by a papal visit to the Hashemite kingdom’s new baptismal site on the banks of the Jordan River, which will showcase the place which some historians now believe Jesus may have been baptized by John the Baptist.

Shouting, crying and clapping, hundreds of Jordanians engulfed the pope’s popemobile as he circled around the stadium grounds at the outset of the Mass, but settled back into their seats as the multilingual liturgy in English, Arabic and French got underway.

“At the River Jordan, John the Baptist points to Jesus as the one upon whom the Holy Spirit descends like a dove,” said the pope in an accent-coated English homily.

Hundreds of children, dressed in long white gowns and carrying yellow candles celebrated their first communion in the open-air ceremony under a cold and cloudy skies which burst open with rain just as the three hour ceremony was ending.

One young Jordanian girl, who was among the 10 children selected to receive the communion directly from the pope himself, said she was so moved by the event that she intended to devote her life to the church.

“I want to become a nun when I grow up,” ten-year-old Madeleine Kandahs said in an interview with Jordan Television.

The children and other participants began gathering at the stadium at the crack of dawn for the event, monitored by extensive security. For hours before the pope’s arrival, Jordanian Air Force helicopters circled overhead while Scout and church groups marched with Jordanian and Arab flags, including groups of Lebanese and Iraqi Christians.

The crowd sang Arabic hymns to an organ accompaniment, which mixed patriotic messages with peace and religious themes.

“We feel as if Jesus Christ himself were here with us,” said Rima Gammo, an Amman housewife who waited with anticipation for her youngest son, Odeh, to take his first communion during the event.

She said she hoped the visit would further improve relations between Jordan’s majority Muslim and minority Christian community, where tensions still bubble beneath a harmonious surface.

“I hope that peace will come,” she said, “I hope people will stop fighting and arguing in this society, not only about politics but also about social issues and religion.

“Because you know that while Muslims and Christians visit each other and eat with each other, there are always some closed minded-people on each side. So it is good for them to see these two great leaders, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Pope John Paul II, Christian and Muslim, showing such respect to each other.”

Indeed, for the tiny Christian community here, which represents at most 3 percent the population, the national welcome accorded to the pope by Islamic leaders and even rank-and-file Muslims has bolstered their sense of security and belonging in a region still fragmented by religious divisions.

“We are so lucky that in our country, Muslims and Christians live in harmony like brother and sister,” said Ghada Yunis, an Amman bookstore owner, who was also at the Mass to watch her 10-year-old son, Tarek, receive his first communion.

A Jordanian of Palestinian origins, Yunis’ Catholic family hails originally from Nazareth, which in the months preceding the papal visit has been wracked by Christian-Muslim tensions over Muslim demands that a mosque be built alongside the city’s most holy Christian site, the Basilica of the Annunciation.

John Paul is set to visit the city on Saturday (March 25).

And nearby, in Egypt, where the pope visited last month, the Christian Coptic community has been periodically plagued by Muslim persecution and violence, Yunis noted. Yunis’ sister, Rima Eskander, meanwhile, lives in Lebanon, which suffered years of civil war between Muslims and Christian militias in the 1980s.

Eskander, who traveled home to Amman to attend the Mass, said the situation of the relatively prosperous Lebanese Christian community in the north of the country today is relatively stable. But uncertainty plagues those Christians in the south that have been aligned with Israel.

She said she was mostly worried today, however, about what might happen to the pope when he begins a six day visit to Israel Tuesday evening.

“I just hope that nothing happens to him in Israel because the way the fanatics there have expressed themselves is really uncivilized,”she said, referring to extremist Jews who have opposed the visit.

“I’ll pray for peace, but mostly I’ll just pray for his health.”

DEA END FLETCHER