NEWS STORY: Catholic leaders optimistic on papal trip to Holy Land

c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ Catholic Church officials _ both in the Mideast and at the Vatican _ are increasingly optimistic that Pope John Paul II will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to celebrate the year 2000, they said Monday (Nov. 16) in releasing a calendar of local Catholic events for […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Catholic Church officials _ both in the Mideast and at the Vatican _ are increasingly optimistic that Pope John Paul II will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to celebrate the year 2000, they said Monday (Nov. 16) in releasing a calendar of local Catholic events for the year the pontiff has dubbed the Great Jubilee.”How can we but hope that the pope, John Paul II, might himself come in pilgrimage to this Holy Land, and bear witness to the faith in Christ … for the health of the entire world!”said Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican’s Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 committee, in what church officials said was one of the most explicit messages from Rome to date regarding the pope’s interest in a visit.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Catholic Patriarch Michel Sabbah told a news conference that local church officials also are hopeful the pope may make the visit _ long a high priority for the pontiff.


But Sabbah said the commitment is not yet definite and no specific date had been set.”It remains our hope that he will come. Now we are waiting for better times, for clearer times to make the calendar,”Sabbah said, indicating that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to be the main obstacle to the visit.”The situation of conflict in the land is one main reason for which Rome cannot decide until now, this date,”said Sabbah, referring to the timing of a visit.”We hope that the year 2000 will be a year of grace which will also bring changes in the vision of the (local) political leadership.

Bishop Kamal Batish, a key figure in the local church’s Year 2000 planning, said church officials are primarily concerned with insuring a papal visit would not provoke some sort of a negative backlash. “We want the visit to the holy land to be for better, and not for worse,”Batish told the reporters.

Introducing the Catholic church calendar for what the Vatican has termed the”Great Jubilee Year,”Sabbah said the featured events would include not only Catholic church and ecumenical events, but also interfaith dialogues and meetings _ some of which are still in the planning stages. “In Jerusalem, the believers of the three monotheistic religions live side-by-side: Jews, Christians and Muslims,”Batish added.”All three have a profound veneration and attachment to the land which each considers to be holy. “Unfortunately, political vicissitudes have been such that they live side-by-side in ignorance, if not in contempt and hatred for each other … We pray the year 2000 will be a year of peace, justice and reconciliation among the two peoples (Jew and Arab) and three religions.” The new calendar outlining events for the jubilee year is the product of an unusual spirit of cooperation among the often rival Catholic rites and Christian sects in the Holy Land. Listed in the 14 months of events, running from December 1999 to January 2001, are local holidays and vigil days of all five Catholic rites which comprise the church in the Holy Land _ Armenian,Greek, Syrian, Latin and Maronite. Also noted are the primary holidays of the Greek Orthodox church, the largest church body here.

The opening and closing of the Jubilee Year will be conducted in coordination with the Vatican, the church officials said.

The Rev. Robert Fortin, secretary general of the Jerusalem committee for the Jubilee celebrations, noted that a bilateral Israeli-Vatican committee is due to meet for the first time this week to grapple with thorny issues associated with the welcome of millions of Christian pilgrims in the millennium year.

He said the committee would tackle problems ranging from the technical _ the opening of traffic bottlenecks on pilgrim routes, publication of coordinated tourist information, and completion of millennium construction projects _ to the larger question of how to prepare the broad Israeli public for”a Christian event in the Holy Land.””There probably hasn’t been as much cooperation as either side would want, but it has taken both sides time to get organized,”Fortin said.”Now that we have our mutual acts together, we now hope to be able to move ahead swiftly.”

DEA END FLETCHER

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