c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II will make a historic March 20-26 pilgrimage to the Holy Land to celebrate the third millennium of Christianity, the Vatican formally announced Wednesday (Jan. 12).

The pope will visit Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Autonomous Territory during his trip, said the Vatican in a brief statement, issued simultaneously by Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian officials as well as by Catholic officials in Jordan and Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah.

John Paul will be only the second pope in church history to travel to the Holy Land. Paul VI visited Jordan and Israel for three days in January 1964, during the Second Vatican Council, in what was then the first trip by a Roman Catholic pontiff outside Italy since 1800.

The 79-year-old John Paul said last June he hoped to celebrate the new millennium with a spiritual pilgrimage through”the history of salvation,”visiting Old and New Testament sites in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority territory, Syria and Greece.

In Wednesday’s brief announcement, the Vatican confirmed John Paul would start his pilgrimage with a visit to the Monastery of Mount Nebo in Jordan from which the Bible says Moses saw the Promised Land, prior to his death.

While in Jordan, the pope also will visit the Jordan Valley site Wadi al Karrar, which is revered by Catholics as the baptismal place of Jesus, Catholic officials in Jordan said.

During his weeklong visit to the region, the pope will celebrate Mass in the Amman Stadium in Bethlehem and at the Jerusalem sites of the Last Supper, or”Cenacle,”and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The pope will hold a special service for youth on the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem church officials said.

From the Mount of Beatitudes, the pope will proceed to Nazareth’s Basilica of the Annunciation on March 25, the Catholic Feast of the Annunciation. The holiday commemorates the tradition of the Angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus at the Nazareth church site.

In deciding to visit Nazareth, the pope put aside the Vatican’s fierce opposition to the planned construction of a mosque adjacent to the ancient church by a local Muslim group.

The dispute has soured local Christian-Muslim relations, generated tensions with Israeli authorities, and triggered the closure of most church sites in the Holy Land for two days in December in protest. Catholic officials had previously warned the controversy could even torpedo the papal visit.”The dispute in Nazareth will go its own way and the visit of the Holy Father will go his way. … The Holy Father has announced his intention to visit Nazareth,”said Sabbah, who is a native of the Galilee city.

During his trip, the pope will meet with King Abdullah of Jordan, Israel’s President Ezer Weizman and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, the Vatican said. The pope also will hold”an ecumenical meeting with heads of Christian churches in the Holy Land.” In a gesture of outreach to the region’s Jews and Muslims, the pope will make an unprecedented visit to Judaism’s Western Wall and the Islamic Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem”to greet the religious authorities of Judaism and Islam,”the Vatican said. In Jerusalem, local church officials said efforts were under way to stage an interreligious encounter between the pope and Islamic and Jewish leaders.

While church officials have stressed the spiritual nature of the pope’s pilgrimage, the visit will clearly be loaded with political symbolism for both Israelis and Palestinians, who have developed diplomatic relations with the Vatican only in the last decade.

At the time of the last papal visit in 1964, the Vatican had no formal ties with Israel, and the holy sites of Jerusalem and Bethlehem were under Jordanian control. The pope’s visit to the Jewish state was thus limited to a very low-profile tour of Nazareth and the surrounding Galilee.”This is a trip in a different time under different circumstances,”said one Catholic official in Jerusalem.

The visit will provide a welcome boost to Christian communities throughout the Middle East, which have been weakened by decades of emigration of church members to the West, fleeing political turmoil and seeking improved economic prospects.”The pope always wanted to visit the Holy Land and now he is realizing his hope. He will come here with a message of peace, justice and reconciliation. What do we need more than that?”said a beaming Sabbah at the news conference in Jerusalem.”This will deepen our spiritual roots and provide encouragement to the local Christian community that is here,”added Sabbah, who is the first Palestinian patriarch of Jerusalem in Catholic Church history.

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John Paul also had hoped to make a series of pilgrimages, starting with a visit to Ur of the Chaldees, birthplace of the Patriarch Abraham in modern day Iraq. But the Iraqi government last month ruled out a papal visit at present because of the United Nations economic embargo and the no-fly zone imposed by the United States and Britain after the 1990 Gulf War.

The Iraqi trip was to have been linked with a visit to Mount Sinai in Egypt,also on hold for the moment.

In a”Letter Concerning Pilgrimage to the Places Linked to the History of Salvation,”which the pope issued in June, he said he also wanted to meditate on the early church by going to Damascus to recall the conversion of St. Paul and to Athens where Paul gave his speech, detailed in the biblical book of Acts, in the Areopagus.

Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Zakka II of Antioch has warmly endorsed a papal visit to Damascus but Greek Orthodox leaders have warned that the Roman Catholic pontiff would not be welcome in Athens.

Eds: Polk reported from the Vatican, Fletcher from Jerusalem.)

DEA END POLK