Saluting 3 Faiths, Pope Departs Holy Land

Pope John Paul II ended an emotional journey through the Holy Land on Sunday with a dramatic act of contrition at Judaism’s most sacred site, the Western Wall, and with tributes to all three faiths that share this troubled region.

Standing in solemn solitude, the pope prayed and touched the wide beige stones of the ancient wall, where he deposited a signed plea for God’s forgiveness for centuries of Catholic torment of the Jewish people. It was a searing image that many Israelis said signaled a new era in Jewish-Christian relations.

It came on the final day of the pope’s weeklong pilgrimage, which concluded with a Mass at the traditional site of Christ’s resurrection and a visit to the hilltop mosque where Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

A tired, frail but uplifted pope returned to Rome late Sunday, closing his 91st trip in a two-decade papacy. He had described it as a lifelong dream to follow Jesus’ path from his birth to his crucifixion. It was a grueling journey that aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation but that often forced the pope to sidestep the political battles of the Middle East.

Israeli officials hailed the visit as a heartfelt endorsement of the Jewish state by one of the world’s most important moral authorities. The pope’s actions here, including a moving memorial at Israel’s Holocaust museum, were seen as the embodiment of a fundamental transformation in historically tortured Jewish-Christian relations.

Some Palestinians too saw affirmation of their national dreams in the pope’s presence, especially in the sympathy he voiced for refugees. But in contrast to the Israeli reaction, Muslim leaders also complained that their agenda received short shrift.

The pope spent the final day of his pilgrimage inside Jerusalem’s walled Old City, saluting the three religions that sprang from Abraham: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He implored the faithful to “live in harmony and cooperation, and bear witness to the one God in acts of goodness and human solidarity.”

Under a resplendent sun that bathed the limestone buildings that give Jerusalem its unique coloring, John Paul came to the Western Wall, the principal remains of the Second Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.

In a brief, subdued ceremony, he joined Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Israeli minister for diaspora affairs, in reading Psalm 122, which prays for peace in Jerusalem: “peace within your wall, serenity within your palaces.” Melchior read in Hebrew, the pontiff in Latin.

Then the head of the Roman Catholic Church, in flowing white robes and with the aid of his cane, took 97 slow steps to the wall, where he stood alone in prayer. With sparrows flitting about, silence descended over the gathering as the pope placed a signed message in a crevice between the roughhewn stones. It is a common practice for observant Jews to deposit prayers or pleas to God at the wall, but the pope’s gesture was unexpected.

He blessed his offering, making a sign of the cross, and reached out to touch the wall again as he prayed for a few more seconds. Melchior finally stepped up to escort him away.

“God of our fathers,” the message said, “you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations. We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Signed: “Joannes Paulus II.”

The message is a repetition of a prayer uttered in the pope’s sweeping March 12 apology to Jews and other people for centuries of persecution and hatred. It does not go beyond previous papal and Vatican pronouncements on Jewish-Catholic relations. But by depositing the prayer here at the wall, and by speaking poignantly on the horrors of the Holocaust at Israel’s Yad Vashem museum Thursday, the pope took his position on anti-Semitism a major step forward.

Officials later removed the note to the archives of Yad Vashem.

Melchior was clearly moved. “This is the beginning of a new era,” he said. The “relationship of humiliation” between Jews and the Christian church, with religion used to spread “hatred, death and bloodshed,” is finished, he said.

“This is a true breakthrough,” said Shlomo Ben-Ami, an academic who is the Israeli minister for public security, and who watched the pope at the wall from a distance. “For 2,000 years we have seen no such sight, and I doubt that we’ll see such a sight over the 2,000 years to come.”

Whether this sentiment trickles down to ordinary Israelis was not immediately clear. As John Paul read the psalm, a man praying at the public section of the wall, about 30 yards away, stuck a finger in his left ear as though to block out the distraction. And at the same time, another observant Jew began screaming at the pope and was hauled away by police. In all, seven Jews and three Palestinians were arrested Sunday in protests related to the pope’s visit.

Even as his entourage threaded its way through the labyrinthine Old City, the pope was confronted--again--by politics and competing claims by Israelis and Palestinians to Jerusalem as their capital.

Before appearing at the Western Wall, the pope visited the adjacent hilltop compound known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif. This is the site of the golden Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine.

As the pope arrived, a huge Palestinian flag fluttered and hundreds of balloons in Palestinian national colors floated high in the sky. They were also visible from the Western Wall. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel claims the entire, undivided city. Although Muslim authorities control the Al Aqsa compound, Israeli police were out in full force Sunday as part of papal security.

The pope met with a contingent of senior imams, and politics was on their minds. Sheik Mohammed Said al-Jamal shook his finger at the pontiff and demanded that he speak out more forcefully on behalf of displaced and imprisoned Palestinians.

The grand mufti for Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Sheik Ekrima Sabri, asked him to help end “the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem,” a city “eternally bonded” to Islam.

As he did throughout delicate moments of the trip, the pope kept his distance from the essential dispute. He told Sabri that Jerusalem, as “the Holy City par excellence,” is common patrimony to all three faiths.

Sabri managed to make headlines here by reiterating, on the eve of his meeting with the pope, his belief that Jews exaggerate the death toll of the Holocaust to gain international sympathy and solidarity. The remarks were widely condemned but illustrated the fact that hard-liners continue to undermine attempts at reconciliation.

After the pope departed, young Palestinian men from an Islamic fundamentalist group known as Tahrir (Liberation) tried to rough up the Palestinian officials who had allowed the pope to “desecrate” Muslim holy sites by his visit. “God condemns you!” shouted one.

Traveling in a caravan of armored white Chevrolet Suburbans, the pope later arrived at Christendom’s most sacred shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He was greeted at the single portal of the 900-year-old building by Syrian Orthodox Christians dressed in red fezzes and wielding ceremonial swords.

The church, which many Christians believe is the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection, is an architectural hodgepodge occupied by six Christian denominations, whose battles over territory and status regarding the premises are legendary. The pope, in a Latin Mass, urged the priests to overcome their differences.

He knelt before the Stone of Unction, where Jesus’ body is said to have been washed before burial, and climbed deep into the bowels of the church to the purported site of Jesus’ tomb, left empty when he rose from the dead. He kissed the stone crypt. Incense and the smell of candle wax filled the air.

The church, the pope said, was the “most hallowed place on Earth” and site of “the central event of human history.”

Later Sunday, the pope made an unscheduled return trip to the church, delighting crowds who jostled in the narrow cobblestoned streets to catch a glimpse. After an official send-off from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his Cabinet, the pontiff flew back to Rome aboard an Israeli El Al airliner, which served him a four-course kosher meal.