Israel, Vatican Edge Toward Full Diplomatic Relations

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres moved Pope John Paul II almost to tears here Friday with a formal invitation to visit the Holy Land. The Pope said he hoped to go.

The invitation climaxed a friendly 45-minute private conversation in the papal library that brought Israel and the Vatican a major step closer to full diplomatic relations for the first time.

A routine exchange of gifts took on symbolic significance for a Pope who has long hoped to visit Jerusalem and other biblical sites. John Paul handed out papal medals, and Peres brought two Iron Age amphorae, or jars, and a votive lamp from the Old Testament Israel of between 1200 and 900 BC. Peres said that “the lamp is to keep our light burning.”

Peres told Israel Radio that the meeting proved not only cordial but also “very, very emotional. . . . When I gave him the invitation, he was moved almost to tears.”

A Vatican account of the meeting gave no indication when the Pope might go to Israel, but it did note John Paul’s “fervent, oft-expressed desire to one day be able to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to the Holy City of Jerusalem.”

After decades of estrangement since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948, high-level talks began last July between Israel and the Vatican. They are intended to lead to full diplomatic relations, and Peres said after Friday’s encounter that Israel and the Vatican would soon name “personal representatives” as a step toward an exchange of ambassadors.

As John Paul reminded Peres, the only Pope so far to visit the Holy Land was Paul VI, in 1964. “He said his predecessor as Pope began his career with a trip to Israel and that he will do this now, in this period,” Peres told the radio.

Peres spoke English with the Pope, but as his delegation left the meeting, John Paul called out: “Shalom!”