Pope Brings Peace Message to Holy Land

Pope John Paul II began a long-awaited pilgrimage to the Holy Land on Monday with a panoramic gaze across its arid landscape from the mountain where Moses is said to have died, and appealed for an end to the region’s ancient conflicts.

“In this area of the world, there are grave and urgent issues of justice, of the rights of peoples and nations, which have to be resolved as a condition for lasting peace,” he said during a welcoming ceremony at the airport outside Amman, the capital of Jordan. “No matter how difficult, no matter how long, the process of seeking peace must continue.”

The words were a pointed effort--the first of many expected from John Paul this week in Jordan, Israel and Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank--to use his personal but highly visible tour of sacred places to goad the Middle East toward peace.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II clasped the Roman Catholic leader’s quivering hands and hailed his visit, the first by a pope to the Holy Land in 36 years, as a “unique and emotional moment that brings closer the meaning of tolerance and coexistence from a distant land of dreams.”

The pope then set off by road for Mt. Nebo to stand where Moses did when God, according to the Old Testament, first showed him the Promised Land across the Jordan River.

On a wind-swept plateau, under a tall cross outside the ruins of a 4th century church, the frail, stooped 79-year-old pilgrim in white stood silent and alone for nearly five minutes. Visible below him, to the west, lay the narrow green band of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and, a few miles away, the West Bank city of Jericho.

Farther afield, lost in a late-afternoon haze, were other biblical sites he will visit during the next six days as he traces Jesus’ steps from birth in Bethlehem to boyhood in Nazareth, along the Sea of Galilee to his crucifixion in Jerusalem. It was a poignant scene of fulfillment and anticipation for John Paul, who has dreamed of this pilgrimage since his election more than 21 years ago. He has fused it with two of the central aims of his papacy--unity among Christians and peace among Christians, Jews and Muslims.

He chose Mt. Nebo, a summit revered by all three monotheistic faiths, and the biblical trials of Moses to make those points Monday.

Moses is a heroic figure to Christians and Jews, who believe that he led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt more than 1,000 years before Christ. He is credited with receiving the Ten Commandments from God and struggling 40 years in the desert to lead his people to fertile land in what is now Israel.

Having lost faith in God at times along the way, however, Moses is said to have met punishment on Mt. Nebo at the end of his journey. “You will die on that mountain,” God told him, according to the Old Testament. “You will not enter the land that I am giving to the people of Israel.”

John Paul Seen as Modern Moses

Some supporters tout John Paul as a latter-day Moses for leading his billion-member flock to the third millennium of Christianity--a comparison repeated Monday by the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls. “The pope wants to see the Holy Land through the eyes of Moses,” Navarro told reporters on the flight here from Rome. “But unlike Moses, he intends to reach it.”

Also unlike Moses, who sought divine help to take the Promised Land by force, John Paul arrived as a messenger of peace.

Leaving his mountaintop lookout, he entered a Catholic-run sanctuary dedicated to Moses and prayed aloud before about 100 people, including a choir of children who sang in Arabic and Latin.

“Within sight of the city of Jericho, our gaze directed toward Jerusalem, let us lift up our prayer to Almighty God for all the people living in the promised land: Jews, Muslims and Christians,” the pope said. He asked God to “bestow upon all who live here the gift of a true peace, justice and fraternity.”

At the airport ceremony earlier, the pope tied the same ideal of inter-religious harmony to the diplomatic search for peace between Israel, neighboring Arab foes and the Palestinians, a sizable minority of whom are Christians in this mostly Muslim region.

“Building a future of peace requires an ever-more mature understanding and ever-more practical cooperation among the peoples who acknowledge the one true, indivisible God,” he said.

That message won official applause in Jordan, where the late King Hussein and now Abdullah often have assumed the role of mediator in regional peace talks. Jordan has cordial relations with Israel and can also represent Palestinian interests; half of Jordan’s population, including Queen Rania, is of Palestinian origin.

Jordan Counting on Peace Deal

About 1 million Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, which lost eastern Jerusalem and its West Bank territories to Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. Jordan hopes to get financial compensation for having housed the refugees once a comprehensive peace is achieved. It counts on a peace deal to boost its economy and its trade as it normalizes ties with Israel and an eventual Palestinian entity.

Abdullah spelled out his country’s hopes before the pope and 300 dignitaries, including Muslim and Christian clerics, who greeted him in a tent pitched on the airport tarmac.

The pope’s visit, said the king, brings “hope for the Palestinians, who yearn for justice and stability, a promise for the Israelis of security and acceptance, comfort for the Lebanese of a better tomorrow and hope for the Syrians that the sad chapter of war is finally over.”

The 38-year-old monarch, who later met privately with the pope, said the pilgrimage also might bring a “brighter day” for Iraqis suffering under nine years of U.N. sanctions.

John Paul, who spoke next, chose his words carefully to strike a balanced tone. He mentioned no country other than Jordan by name, praising its support for diplomacy and tolerance for all religions. He offered a prayer for Jordanians and “the displaced people in your midst.”

The pope’s chartered Alitalia jet veered from a direct flight path between Rome and Amman to pass over Lebanon and Syria. As it did so, the Vatican messaged papal greetings and wishes of peace to the leaders of those countries. Four Royal Jordanian Air Force fighter jets picked up the papal flight in this country’s airspace and escorted it in.

Despite tremors attributed to Parkinson’s disease, the pope walked unaided down the ramp of his plane and spoke firmly. His forehead bore a scar--the result, his spokesman said, of banging his head against a bookcase while reaching for a book in his study Friday.

At least 15,000 cheering Jordanians--Christians and Muslims--lined the streets of Madaba, the town nearest Mt. Nebo, as John Paul rode past in his popemobile on the 26-mile route back to Amman. He is to say Mass here today for some of Jordan’s 130,000 Roman Catholics.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.