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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