NEWS STORY: Pope Reflects on Holy Land Pilgrimage, Prays for Peace

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II, newly returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, said Wednesday (March 29) he prays that “this unforgettable experience” will bear fruit for the Roman Catholic Church and all of humanity. The 79-year-old pontiff called on Jews, Christians and Muslims to put aside […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II, newly returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, said Wednesday (March 29) he prays that “this unforgettable experience” will bear fruit for the Roman Catholic Church and all of humanity.

The 79-year-old pontiff called on Jews, Christians and Muslims to put aside their deep-seated differences and make Jerusalem a “symbol of peace.” He urged the Catholic and Orthodox churches to press forward with dialogue.


Rome’s chief rabbi, Elio Toaff said the papal trip to Israel _ which included visits to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest place _ was another major step toward improving relations between Jews and Catholics. Toaff received John Paul in 1986 when the pope made his historic visit to the Rome synagogue.

“The pontiff’s trip to Israel and the Holy Land was very important,” Toaff said. “It swept away so many prejudices and so many false reports circulating on relations between Jews and Christians.”

John Paul, who returned March 26 from the visit to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, talked about the trip at length to an unusually large crowd of 60,000 Holy Year pilgrims attending his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square in rainy weather. At the start of the audience, he drove through the square in an open car, unprotected by bullet-proof glass.

Making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the pope said, “was like returning to the origins, the roots of faith and of the church.”

John Paul, who first visited the Holy Land in 1965 while attending the Second Vatican council as a young auxiliary bishop of Krakow, Poland, has talked about his wish to make a papal pilgrimage since his first Christmas as pope in 1978.

“While I express again to the Lord my gratitude for this unforgettable experience, I ask him with humble faith to draw abundant fruits from it for the good of the church and of humanity,” he said.

Before leaving Rome on what he described as a spiritual pilgrimage, John Paul said he hoped the trip also would help to create the climate for peace in the Middle East and improve Catholic relations with Jews, Muslims and the Eastern churches estranged from Rome since the Great Schism of 1054.


At each encounter with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and Muslim officials last week, the pope heard rival claims to Jerusalem. Israelis claim the city their “eternal and undivided capital” while Palestinians seek to establish the capital of an independent state in East Jerusalem. He listened without comment.

“Although going through great difficulties, Jerusalem is called to become the symbol of peace among all who believe in the God of Abraham and submit to his law,” John Paul said at his audience. “May men hasten the completion of this design.”

The rivalry over Jerusalem even extended to a war of balloons. While John Paul was visiting the Muslim grand mufti, Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, on March 26, Palestinians floated the red, white, green and black Palestinian flag attached to balloons and hundreds of balloons in the Palestinian colors over Temple Mount. As the pope stood at the door to his El Al jet waving goodbye to Israeli leaders Sunday (March 26) night he looked up in surprise to see scores of balloons in the Israeli colors of blue and white rising into the sky.

The pope said his ecumenical meeting with Patriarchs Diodoros I of the Greek Orthodox Church and Torkom Manoogian of the Armenian Apostolic Church and other Orthodox leaders “marked an important step on the road toward the full unity among Christians.”

During the meeting, John Paul urged the churches to put aside their squabbles over control of holy sites.

“I ask you to pray that the process of understanding and collaboration among Christians of the various churches may be strengthened and developed,” the pope told the pilgrims at his audience.


The trip took the pope to Mount Nebo in Jordan from where the Bible says Moses saw the Promised Land before he died. He celebrated Mass in Manger Square in Bethlehem and the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, on the Mount of Beatitudes in Galilee and in the Cenaculum, site of the Last Supper, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which stands on the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection, in Jerusalem.

“My Jubilee pilgrimage to the holy places led me to the land that saw the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the first steps of the church. The joy and gratitude that I carry in my soul are inexpressible.”

John Paul said the Mass on the Mount of Beatitudes, attended by 100,000

young people from Europe, Asia and the Americas, was “a moment laden with hope.”

“Proclaiming and entrusting the Commandments of God and the Beatitudes

to the young people, I saw in them the future of the church and the world,” he said.

But, he said, the high point of the pilgrimage was his two visits to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the first to celebrate Mass and the second an unscheduled private visit just before he left Jerusalem to return to Rome.

The Mass, he said, “was the moment in which my pilgrimage reached its culmination. For this reason I felt the need to pause again in prayer in the afternoon on Calvary where Christ shed his blood for humanity.”

KRE END POLK

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