http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/middleeast/09pope.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=catholic&st=cse
Pope, Hope in Hand, Arrives in Mideast
By RACHEL DONADIO
AMMAN, Jordan — When Pope John Paul II traveled to the Holy Land in 2000,
the visit was history, the first by a pope to recognize the state of Israel
or visit sites holy to Islam.
When Benedict XVI flew to the region Friday, landing in Jordan before
traveling on next week to Israel and the Palestinian territories, it was much
more about him personally. A man whose four-year papacy has been marked by
missteps that angered and offended Jews and Muslims will deliver 32 speeches
at some of the holiest sites in the world to Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Each word will be scrutinized, particularly by listeners with little
affection for him. Already, Islamic groups in Jordan are protesting.
“The thing that worries me most is the speech that the pope will deliver
here,” Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, told the
Israeli daily Haaretz on Wednesday. “One word for the Muslims and I’m in
trouble; one word for the Jews and I’m in trouble. At the end of the visit
the pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences.”
But for the Vatican, Benedict’s trip is an opportunity to urge Palestinians
and Israelis toward peace and to continue his assiduous efforts to improve
his standing with Jews and Muslims.
“The trip is very important and very complex,” the Vatican spokesman, the
Rev. Federico Lombardi, said this week. He called the journey “an act of
hope and faith toward peace and reconciliation.” Given the tensions in the
region, he added, “it seems a brave gesture.”
In the works since last fall, Benedict’s trip comes at a time of change and
uncertainty in the region. Israel just ushered in a new right-wing
government, that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And the two main
Palestinian factions remain hostile and divided, with the secular Palestinian
Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, controlling the West Bank, and the
Islamist group Hamas ruling Gaza.
Emotions are still raw after 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli
military assault on Gaza in January, which some at the Vatican opposed.
But Vatican officials say the pope was eager to make the trip, no matter the
conditions, given his age. He turned 82 last month. Benedict sparked global
outrage in January by revoking the excommunication of a schismatic bishop
from an ultratraditionalist sect — a Briton, Richard Williamson, who had
recently been filmed denying the scope of the Holocaust. Many Jews had
already viewed Benedict with some suspicion, given that he is a German who
was forced into the Hitler Youth and the German Army in World War II.
After Jews and Catholics alike said the church’s moral authority had been
eroded by the Williamson episode, Benedict issued an unprecedented personal
letter in March explaining his motives. And in Israel, he will likely be able
to draw on reserves of good will for his many years, as a cardinal, improving
once tense relations between Catholics and Jews. He will visit the Yad Vashem
Holocaust memorial and meet with survivors.
His visit comes three years after he offended many Muslims with a speech in
Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who said Islam
encouraged violence and brought things “evil and inhuman.” To make amends,
he reached out to various Muslim groups and prayed in the Blue Mosque in
Istanbul on a trip to Turkey two months after the speech. And he will
continue that effort in Jordan, where he arrives on Friday and will visit a
mosque and meet with Muslim clerics and scholars.
“His willingness to open up to members of other faith communities is
obviously a welcome development,” said Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for the
Common Word initiative, a group of Muslim leaders and scholars that began a
dialogue with the Vatican after the Regensburg speech.
Benedict will also visit Mount Nebo, the spot from which Moses is believed to
have seen the Promised Land.
On Monday, Benedict lands in Tel Aviv for four intense days in Israel that
will include visits to the Western Wall, holy to Jews; and, sacred to
Catholics, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the hall where Jesus is
believed to have had the Last Supper. In Jerusalem he will visit the
religious compound in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary
and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The Vatican’s Jewish interlocutors say they hope the trip will mend fences,
while Israeli officials hope it will boost Christian tourism to the region.
The trip is an important opportunity for the pope “to demonstrate visually,”
that the relationship between Jews and Catholics “has continued to flourish
since the visit of John Paul II,” said Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of
International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations.
In recent months, tensions have brewed between Israel and the Vatican over a
plaque in Yad Vashem criticizing Pope Pius XII for not doing enough to save
Jews during the Holocaust. Pius, who served from 1939 until 1958, is on track
for sainthood.
Israeli officials sidestepped the issue by having the pope visit the Hall of
Remembrance at Yad Vashem, but not the museum.
Tensions are even higher over the visit to Bethlehem, where Palestinians
erected a stage for the pope next to a portion of the separation barrier that
Israel has been building to wall itself off from the West Bank. But after
complaints from Israel, the Vatican nuncio said that Benedict would speak
from a nearby United Nations school.
There, Benedict is expected to make a speech calling attention to a pressing
concern of the Catholic Church: the rapidly declining number of Christians in
the Middle East. Although Christians have remained about 2 percent of Israel’
s population since its founding, their presence in places like Bethlehem has
decreased radically in past decades.
Faced with poverty and unemployment, many Palestinians are “not too
optimistic about the pope’s visit,” said Mohammed Dajani, the founder of
the Wasatia Movement that promotes moderation in Islam and director of
American Studies department at Al-Quds University.
“People are saying the pope is pro-Israel, that he wants to please Israel,
so they don’t have much hope from the visit,” Mr. Dajani added.
In a message on Wednesday, Benedict addressed the people of the places on his
itinerary. “My primary intention is to visit the places made holy by the
life of Jesus, and, to pray at them for the gift of peace and unity for your
families, and all those for whom the Holy Land and the Middle East is home.”
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