NEWS STORY: Pope Hopes Trip Will Aid Middle East Peace Process

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II hopes his spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land next week will advance ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and help to create a climate for peace in the Middle East, the Vatican said Friday (March 17). Chief spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Roman Catholic pontiff […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II hopes his spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land next week will advance ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and help to create a climate for peace in the Middle East, the Vatican said Friday (March 17).

Chief spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Roman Catholic pontiff will travel to Israeli and the autonomous Palestinian territories March 21-26 as “a friend of the Jewish people,” the pope who declared anti-Semitism to be a sin and established relations with Israel, but also as a supporter of “the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland.”


“The pope has no political formulas, but he hopes to contribute to the creation of a climate in which political solutions can be applied for the two sides to elaborate,” the spokesman said.

Navarro-Valls noted that John Paul first spoke of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land at Christmas 1978, little more than two months after he was elected pope. The trip became possible when the Vatican and the Jewish state established full diplomatic relations in 1993 but was delayed to coincide with the start of the third millennium of Christianity.

“The pope wants to pray personally, carrying with him all the Catholic church, at the start of the third millennium in the places where the church was born,” the spokesman said.

To recall the Last Supper of Jesus and the 12 Apostles, the pontiff will concelebrate a private Mass on Thursday, March 23, in the Chapel of the Last Supper in Jerusalem with 12 bishops of the six Catholic rites present in the Holy Land. On Friday, March 24, he will celebrate Mass on the Mount of Beatitudes for hundreds of thousands of people, an event unprecedented in the Holy Land, Navarro-Valls said.

But John Paul gives equal importance, he said, to the ecumenical and interfaith meetings he will hold in Jerusalem and to encouraging the Middle East peace process.

The spokesman said the Vatican hopes that the two chief rabbis of Israeli and the Grand Mufti and supreme Islamic judge will attend a historic encounter of leaders of the world’s three monotheistic religions March 23 in Jerusalem. The meeting is scheduled for “a place that is not a church, mosque or synagogue,” he noted, but the auditorium of the Pontifical Institute of Notre Dame.

On March 25, the pope will meet with leaders of the seven non-Catholic churches in the Holy Land _ Greek, Syrian and Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Lutheran and Anglican _ in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as with the moderator of the Church of Scotland and another Protestant representative.


“This is the geographical area where the church was founded as one. Now we are far from the original,” Navarro-Valls said. He said the pope will pray for Christian unity.

John Paul’s visit to the Deheisha refugee camp on March 22, is linked to his desire for “justice and peace,” the spokesman said. He said the pope “wants to remind the world of the problem” of 21 million refugees worldwide, including the more than 350,000 Palestinians in 10 camps on the West Bank and nearly 725,000 in seven camps on the Gaza Strip.

The spokesman said that at the urging of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the pope also will make a brief visit on Wednesday to Al-Maghtas in the Jordan Valley near Jericho, one of two possible baptismal sites of Jesus.

Navarro-Valls said the visit had not been scheduled originally because the territory is disputed by Israelis and Palestinians, and the land was mined during past Middle East wars. He said the pope will travel alone by helicopter and will not be met by authorities of either side.

DEA END POLK

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