NEWS STORY: Pope visits site of the Annunciation, Gethsemane, holds ecumenical meeting

c. 2000 Religion News Service JERUSALEM, March 25 (RNS) – Pope John Paul II took his spiritual pilgrimage Saturday (March 25) to Nazareth to celebrate the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth and to the garden of Gethsemane to mourn his betrayal. Later, he appealed to leaders of other Christian churches to end “scandalous squabbling over holy […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM, March 25 (RNS) – Pope John Paul II took his spiritual pilgrimage Saturday (March 25) to Nazareth to celebrate the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth and to the garden of Gethsemane to mourn his betrayal. Later, he appealed to leaders of other Christian churches to end “scandalous squabbling over holy sites and make 2000 “a year of grace for the ecumenical movement.”

“Fraternal cooperation among Christians of this holy city is no mere option,” the Roman Catholic pontiff told Diodoros I, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and prelates an ecumenical meeting in the Greek Orthodox Patriarcate.


“In the Holy Land, where Christians live side-by-side with the followers of Judaism and Islam, where there are almost daily tensions and conflicts, it is essential to overcome the scandalous impression given by our disagreements and arguments,” he said. “In this city, it should be eminently possible for Christians, Jews and Muslims to live together in brotherhood and freedom, in dignity, justice and peace.”

John Paul urged Christian churches to adopt the spirit of the Old Testament jubilees and “ask forgiveness for the wounds which the members of our churches have inflicted upon one another down the years.”

“With God’s grace,” he said, “the 2,000th anniversary of the incarnation of the word will be a favorable time, a year of grace for the ecumenical movement.”

Earlier in the day, the 79-year-old pontiff flew to Nazareth to celebrate the Annunciation in the place where the Bible says it took place. He prayed to the Virgin Mary to renew Christian faith, defend the family and inspire service to the poor.

The Roman Catholic pontiff, nearing the end of his week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, said he gave thanks for “one of the supreme moments of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.”

“I have longed to come back to the town of Jesus, to feel once again, in contact with this place, the presence of the women of whom St. Augustine wrote: `He chose the mother he had created; he created the mother he had chosen,”’ the pope said. “Here it is especially easy to understand why all generations call Mary blessed.”

After several hours of rest in at the residence of the Vatican envoy to Jerusalem, John Paul received the counsels general of the United States and seven other countries and made a private visit to the Basilica of the Agony in the traditional site of the Garden of Gethsemane.


The basilica was built in 1924 on the foundations of a 12th century Crusader chapel abandoned in 1345 and a 4th century Byzantine basilica destroyed by an earthquake.

The pope’s visit to Gethsemane where Christ prayed alone on the night he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot was brief, lasting about half an hour, but intense.

John Paul walked in a slow shuffle, leaning heavily on his cane, to the garden of the church to gaze at eight ancient olive trees, one of them at least 2,500 years old. The name Gethsemane is a Greek form of the Hebrew word for olive oil press.

Inside the dimly lit church, the pope kneeled in prayer before the altar for 15 minutes, his head in his hands, an agonized expression on his face, as a woman read in Italian from the Gospel of John in a low voice.

His concentration was so intense that he gave no sign of hearing the continual clicking of camera shutters and two loud noises outside.

John Paul flew to Nazareth, the city in Galilee that was the boyhood home of Jesus, to pray in the grotto where it is believed that the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus and to preside at a Mass for the Solemnity of the Annunciation.


The pope received a warm welcome in Arab-administered Nazareth where Christians make up about 48 percent of the population of 40,000. Large crowds lined his route through the center of the city on a cold, gray day, and strings of multicolored fringe fluttered overhead.

Despite heavy security, friendly crowds mobbed the popemobile as it took the pope back to the heliport after the Mass. The vehicle, a bullet-proof glass box on a small flatbed truck, had to inch its way through the crush of people.

Nazareth was rocked by politically inspired riots between Muslims and Christians last Easter and has been the center of a bitter dispute over plans to construct a mosque in the shadow of the Basilica of the Annunciation.

But Muslim leaders said they welcomed the pope’s visit and worked with the Israeli government to head off a general strike threatened by city employees demanding payment of back salaries. They invited the pope to ride through Muslim neighborhoods in his glass-walled popemobile, and the Mulsim muzzein muted the call to prayer during the Mass.

Celebrating the Christian feast on the Jewish Sabbath also presented problems. The pilots of the pope’s Israeli army helicopter were drafted for the day into the police force, which is permitted to work on the Sabbath whereas army operations are allowed only during war.

The 5,000 worshippers invited to attend the Mass greeted the pope with applause, ululations and chants of “John Paul two, we love you.”


John Paul, who has a special devotion to the Virgin Mary, first visited Nazareth as a young auxiliary bishop of Krakow, Poland, in 1965, a year after Pope VI made the first papal pilgrimage to the city.

“What do we, pilgrims on our way into the third Christian millennium, ask of the mother of God?” the pope inquired in his homily.

“First,” he said, “for a great renewal of faith in all the children of the church. A deep renewal of faith: not just as a general attitude of life but as a conscious and courageous profession of the Creed.

“I ask the holy family to inspire all Christians to defend the family against so many present-day threats to its nature, its stability and its mission. To the holy family I entrust the efforts of Christians and of all people of good will to defend life and to promote respect for the dignity of every human being.

In speaking of the defense of life, John Paul referred to his strong and oft-stated opposition to artificial methods of birth control, abortion and euthanasia. He also has condemned divorce and same-sex unions as a threat to the family.

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The Basilica of the Annunciation, a pale stone-clad building of re-enforced concrete dedicated in 1969, stands above the grotto of the Annunciation. An octagonal opening below the main altar leads to the lower church and the doorway to the grotto.


Nazareth is built over a network of caves, or grottos, which were used as dwellings in biblical times and later.

The pope kneeled in silent prayer before the 17th century Franciscan altar in the grotto and placed a spray of gilded lilies on the altar.

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