NEWS ADVANCE: Pope’s Holy Land Trip Culminates Long and Dramatic Papacy

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ The pilgrimage that an aging and ill Pope John Paul II will make to the Holy Land next week could well mark the culminating moments of his long papacy. The six-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the autonomous Palestinian territories will be John Paul’s 91st outside Italy […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The pilgrimage that an aging and ill Pope John Paul II will make to the Holy Land next week could well mark the culminating moments of his long papacy.

The six-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the autonomous Palestinian territories will be John Paul’s 91st outside Italy since he was elected Roman Catholic pontiff in 1978 _ and one of his most important in both spiritual and temporal terms.


What the pope insists will be “an exclusively religious pilgrimage” celebrating the start of the third millennium of Christianity, will, however, inevitably affect ecumenical and interfaith relations and possibly the peace process as well in the volatile Middle East.

It also will severely test John Paul’s dwindling strength.

The pope will turn 80 on May 18 and is increasingly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, but he was nevertheless determined to revisit the biblical sites he first saw 35 years ago when he was archbishop of Krakow, Poland.

Writing last June about his intention to “make a pilgrimage to the places linked to the history of salvation,” John Paul said he wanted to join “in a long procession of people who for 2,000 years have gone in search of the footprints of God.”

But he will walk through a minefield of religious and political sensibilities in a land that is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike and where disputes between Christians over holy sites are as common as inter-communal clashes.

Relations between Catholics and Jews have improved dramatically since the Second Vatican Council issued the landmark declaration “Nostra Aetate,” which asserted “the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews” and deplored “the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews.” The Vatican and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1993 and they were fully implemented in 1994.

But many Jews believe the Vatican has not gone far enough to acknowledge and atone for the silence of most Catholics during the World War II Holocaust, and are deeply angered at the possibility of sainthood for the wartime Pope Pius XII.

Leaders of Jewish groups expressed dissatisfaction with the document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” which the Vatican issued in March 1998. They said they also were disappointed with the lack of any reference to the Holocaust in the pope’s apology at an unprecedented “Day of Pardon” Mass last Sunday (March 12) for Christian persecution of the Jews.


John Paul will unavoidably face that issue on Thursday, March 23, when he visits the Yad Vashem Hall of Remembrance, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. The Vatican said he will deliver a speech during the visit.

The status of Jerusalem is another flash point in relations between Israel and the Vatican. It was thought for many years a papal visit would be impossible until the Jewish state and the church reached agreement on some form of international guarantee for the city.

The issue came to a head again on Feb. 15 when the Vatican signed an accord on relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO seeks to make East Jerusalem the capital of an independent Palestinian state while Israel has claimed the city as its “eternal and indivisible” capital.

The Israeli Ministry expressed “deep irritation” over the agreement’s call for an internationally guaranteed “special statute” for Jerusalem to safeguard free access for Jews, Christians and Muslims and preserve the status quo. The ministry said this represents “interference” in the peace talks.

Israeli officials made clear, however, the incident would not affect the papal visit, which they hope will serve to display Israel’s careful custodianship of the holy sites and its openness to Christian pilgrims.

The question of the Vatican’s often-repeated support for the creation of a Palestinian state will come to the fore again on Wednesday, March 22, when the pope speaks during a visit to the Deheisha refugee camp near the Palestinian-controlled city of Bethlehem.


Israeli-governed Nazareth, scene of the annunciation and of the childhood home of Jesus, has also been the center of a bitter dispute in recent months between Christians and Muslims with Israeli officials as unhappy middlemen.

At issue was the plan by militant Muslims to build a mosque next door to the Basilica of the Annunciation, which stands on the site where tradition holds the angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would give birth to Jesus.

The Vatican threatened at one point to cancel the pope’s visit to Nazareth, but construction of the mosque was delayed until after Holy Year, and Muslims expressed eagerness to welcome the Roman Catholic leader to the Christian city.

Israeli officials, who met with the pope last week to finalize plans, said he will ride through Muslim neighborhoods in his bullet-proof glass popemobile on Saturday, March 25, on his way from the Nazareth heliport to celebrate a Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation.

John Paul will be the second Roman Catholic pontiff to visit the Holy

Land. Pope Paul VI traveled there in January 1964 on the first papal trip outside Italy since Napoleon Bonaparte forced Pius VII into exile at Fontainebleau in France in 1812.

Paul VI’s nine international trips between 1964 and 1970 and John Paul’s 91 between 1979 and today, add up to a total of 100.


DEA END POLK

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