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Israel welcomes visit to Israel
by This pope, more than any other before him, has taken a long series of bold steps along a path already charted, before him, by Pope John XXIII - the path of historic reconciliation with the Jewish people, on the basis of the Church's unflinching acknowledgment of its own role in paving the way, over the centuries, for what Pope John Paul II himself called "those unspeakable crimes" of the Nazi regime in the middle of the last century of the second millennium. As the pope justly pointed out in an address at the Vatican on April 7, 1994, we must recognize that "antisemitism, xenophobia and racial hatred... were the seeds" of those Nazi crimes, and Catholics and Jews must now work together to resist "the many new manifestations" of these seeds in the world today. That was merely one of many occasions on which the pope expressed himself in these and similar terms. Moreover, long before the Holy See dispatched its first diplomatic envoy to Israel, in 1994, Pope John Paul II gave full recognition (April 20, 1984) to Jewish nationhood, by right, in the Land of Israel: For the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel and who preserve in that land such precious testimonies to their history and their faith, we must ask for the desired security and the due tranquillity that are the prerogative of every nation . . . The pope comes to the Holy Land invoking the name of Jesus - and that of Father Abraham. By the very same token, he was able to make his now-famous proclamation, during his historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986: With Judaism, we have a relationship that we do not have with other religions. You are our dearly beloved brothers; in a certain way, indeed, it could be said that you are our elder brothers. Again invoking the name of our common ancestor, Pope John Paul II, writing
to the Jews of Poland on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising,
issued this simple yet eloquent and most meaningful appeal (as reported in L'Osservatore
Romano, August 17, 1993): As Christians and Jews, following the example of the faith of Abraham, we are called to be a blessing to the world (cf. Gen. 12:2 ff.). This is the common task awaiting us. It is therefore necessary for us, Christians and Jews, to be first a blessing to one another. To which we would add but one word: Amen!
Pope John Paul II
March 21-26, 2000
On March 21, 2000, His Holiness Pope John Paul II is due to arrive in Israel
for a five-day pilgrimage that will take him to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth
and other places in Galilee associated with the birth of Christianity two millennia
ago. For the pope, this will be the realization of a long-held and oft-expressed
wish, and he will be warmly welcomed, not only by the Government of Israel but
also - as evidenced by a recent Gallup Poll - by the people of Israel. And the
reason is not hard to find: