To help revive Christian pilgrimages to Israel--a...

To help revive Christian pilgrimages to Israel--a tourism mainstay for that country that is reportedly down 30%--entertainer Pat Boone went to the Holy Land this month to make promotional tapes for American television.

Boone, a member of Church on the Way in Van Nuys, has frequently visited Galilee and other sites mentioned in the Bible.

But this time, in a government-backed campaign which Religious News Service says is costing $500,000, Boone will appear in Israeli tourist advertising in Christian magazines such as Charisma, Christianity Today and Christian Herald.

In October and November, Boone will appear in television and radio ads on several Christian networks. Thousands of travel kits featuring Boone will be distributed to churches and tour organizers.

“Pat Boone will be the ambassador of good will for the state of Israel,” said Yosef Shoval, spokesman for Israel’s Tourism Ministry.

Nearly 30 years ago, Boone wrote the theme to the movie “Exodus,” a drama about Israel’s independence. “My love for Israel is an intensely personal thing . . . I consider myself an adopted Jew,” Boone said.

PEOPLE

* Father Catalin Mitescu, 53, the newly elected president of the Southern California Orthodox Clergy Council, looks like any other faculty member at Pomona College where he is the Seeley W. Mudd Professor of Physics. “But if I have a funeral or other church services before or after class, I don’t hesitate to wear my clerical collar and black suit to class,” Mitescu said. The priest-scholar functions unofficially as the Eastern Orthodox chaplain for students attending the Claremont Colleges. Affiliated with the Romanian Diocese of the Orthodox Church in America, Mitescu also serves as assistant priest at Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church in Los Angeles. Mitescu succeeds Father Michael Laffoon of St. Mark’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Irvine as president of the clergy council, which includes Orthodox priests from 36 parishes and missions from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs.

* Bishop B. R. Benbow, 74, one of three Church of God in Christ bishops in Southern California, has received the “man of the year” award in the black Pentecostal denomination for his religious and humanitarian contributions. Benbow, a bishop since 1980, also pastors the 700-member New Light Church of God in Christ in Santa Monica and heads a program to feed the homeless. He received the citation last weekend at the annual meeting of the 17 congregations he oversees.

DENOMINATION

The Rev. Troy Perry, founder-moderator of the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Community Churches, established a “first” for the homosexual-oriented denomination when he brought greetings to the House of Bishops meeting during the Episcopal Church’s General Convention last week in Phoenix. The convention courtesy call--common among mainline denominations--was the first at another denomination’s meeting by Perry, whose own church body was meeting concurrently in Phoenix at a resort hotel. At the MCC convention, Perry presided over a mass public “rite of blessing” for about 150 same-sex couples. The Episcopalians had before them a proposal to allow similar blessings in their churches, but bishops, clergy and lay delegates delayed any changes in church stances on homosexual issues because of a lack of consensus on the issues.

STATISTICS

United Methodist Church membership in Southern California and Hawaii decreased in the last year by 2,734 people to a total of 123,192--continuing a more-than-two-decade slide also reflected in nationwide figures. Unofficial estimates from regional bodies of the nation’s second-largest Protestant body show a one-year drop of 62,169 to 8,812,294 members in the United States and Puerto Rico.

CONFERENCE

The 71-year-old Self-Realization Fellowship, an international religious organization blending Eastern and Christian concepts, will begin its annual, seven-day convention Sunday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The convocation includes classes and seminars, including instruction in the yoga meditation techniques of Paramahansa Yogananda, who founded the society in America.