NEWS STORY: Pope Makes `Virtual’ Trip to Ur

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Barred from traveling in person to Iraq, Pope John Paul II made a virtual visit Wednesday (Feb. 23) to the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham to open his Holy Year pilgrimage through “the history of salvation.” “Abraham has a fundamental importance for believers of every epoch,” the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Barred from traveling in person to Iraq, Pope John Paul II made a virtual visit Wednesday (Feb. 23) to the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham to open his Holy Year pilgrimage through “the history of salvation.”

“Abraham has a fundamental importance for believers of every epoch,” the Roman Catholic pontiff said, “and thus also for us who look on him as a model of unconditional submission to the will of God.”


Using symbols of key events in the prophet’s life and documentary film of his birthplace at Ur of the Chaldees, the present day Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq, the pope staged a commemoration of “Abraham, our father in faith.”

John Paul had hoped to visit Ur on the first leg of a pilgrimage to biblical sites in chronological order to mark the start of the third millennium of Christianity.

Instead, he celebrated a Liturgy of the Word in the Paul VI Audience Hall on the eve of his departure Thursday (Feb. 24) for a three-day visit to Cairo and Mount Sinai. He will travel to the Holy Land March 20-26.

The Vatican announced Dec. 10 that the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had vetoed a papal visit because of the “abnormal conditions” created by economic sanctions the United Nations imposed after the 1990 Gulf War and the U.S. and British no-fly zones, one of which includes Ur.

The Catholic newspaper Avvenire reported Wednesday, however, it was the Vatican that decided against the visit because the Iraqis insisted on using the pope’s spiritual pilgrimage for political ends, which the Vatican considered “unacceptable.”

“Evidently, behind so much willingness there was a precise calculation on the part of the Iraqi government,” the newspaper said. It said the government, which is pressing for the lifting of the sanctions, wanted to use the visit not only to improve its image on the international scene but also “for an even more concrete political return.”

The pope said in a letter published in June he intended “on the occasion of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 to follow the traces of the history of salvation in the land in which it took place.”


Addressing some 8,000 people, including dozens of cardinals and hundreds of bishops Wednesday, John Paul said it was in Abraham, a prophet for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, that “the story of salvation began.”

The enactment of the virtual visit to Ur was highly unusual and probably unprecedented in the history of Vatican ceremonies.

Images of Ur played on a giant screen inside the hall and in St. Peter’s Square where another 7,000 pilgrims remained after the pope’s weekly general audience, cut short for the ceremony.

Arrayed on the platform around the pope were three flaming bronze braziers, a life-size reproduction of a 15th century icon by Russian painter Andrei Rublev showing the three angels who appeared to Abraham, and pieces of oak to recall the trees of Mamre where Abraham encountered the angels. There was also a rock, standing for the altar on which Abraham offered to sacrifice his son Isaac, and scenes from the prophet’s life in copies of frescoes from the Roman Catacombs, mosaics from the sixth century Church of St. Vitalis in Ravenna in northern Italy and a ceramic by the 20th century Russian painter Marc Chagall.

John Paul said in his homily that even before Moses heard the words of the Lord on Mount Sinai, Abraham received God’s instruction to leave Ur and lead his people to the Promised Land.

“Therefore, we must direct ourselves in thought toward such an important place in the history of the people of God to search there for the primordial alliance of God with man,” the pope said.


In Iraq, Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of Babylon of the Chaldeans scheduled a simultaneous prayer service in the Baghdad Cathedral for thousands of Chaldean Catholics who had fasted for three days, the missionary news agency Fides said.

John Paul’s trip to Egypt will be the 90th he has made outside Italy since he was elected pope in 1978. The schedule is lighter than on past trips but still is a demanding one for the 79-year-old pontiff, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

The pope will meet with President Hosni Mubarak on his arrival at Cairo International Airport, then pay courtesy calls on Egypt’s two most important religious leaders _ Shenouda III, the Coptic pope of Alexandria and patriarch of the See of St. Mark, and Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Al Azhar and leader of Sunni Muslims.

On Friday, John Paul will celebrate a Roman Catholic Mass in the Cathedral of Our Lady for Egypt’s small Coptic Catholic minority and later meet with Christian leaders in the chapel of the Major Inter-Ritual Seminary of St. Leo the Great.

On Saturday he will fly to Sinai to visit the Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai at the foot of Mount Sinai and lead a prayer service in the Garden of Olives. His stay will last only two hours and 50 minutes, but it will be the high point of the trip.

The Old Testament Book of Exodus says it was on Mount Sinai that Moses received the revelation of God’s name and where God later sealed the covenant with his people by giving Moses the Ten Commandments.


The pope’s trip next month will take him to Jordan and to Israel and Palestinian-controlled territories where he will trace the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

DEA END POLK

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