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Pope arrives on 'peace pilgrimage'



By Lorenzo Cremonesi


It would be a mistake to focus attention exclusively on relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish world during the Pope's visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Although there are clearly two different perspectives here, in the eyes of John Paul II, the issue has already been dealt with extensively in recent years.

Relations between the Church and the Jews is undoubtedly still an important issue for the Pope. He is, however, far more concerned with a much greater problem: secularization, the disappearance of the sense of sanctity in an ever more materialistic and consumerist world, in which new forms of seeking the divine clash with those traditionally set forth by the Church. In this sense, the Pope has much more in common with Jewish and Muslim religious leaders than one might think. Karol Wojtyla, in his struggle against abortion or the progressive movements in the West that would like to see women ordained to the priesthood, can well share the concerns of the Orthodox rabbinate over the materialism that prevails in Tel Aviv, or the "heresies" of Reform Judaism. He has less interest in reopening questions of theology between the Church and its "elder brothers" - discussed extensively at the time of his historic visit to a synagogue in Rome in 1986 and in following years - than in establishing the holy places of the three monotheistic religions in Jerusalem as renewed symbols of "evangelization" on Earth. It may seem paradoxical, especially in light of 2,000 years of Christian anti-Judaism, but for this pope, the danger of a new paganism is such today that he would prefer an Orthodox Jew, well-rooted in his faith, to a Catholic who has lost his sense of God.

On his visit, the Pope will do his best to present himself as a "pilgrim," portraying his visit in the sense mentioned above: to work for the return of the spirit of the divine among men at the dawn of the third millennium. It is well known in the Vatican that the Pope has for some time wanted to go to Israel, even hinting - in a rather messianic way - at the possibility of "dying in the Holy Land," the final supreme act of a life dedicated to the Church. He has spoken of this journey at every possible opportunity since the early 1980s. It was always the Secretariat of State (the Vatican foreign ministry) that obliged him to postpone such a visit, citing reasons of political expediency.

The political dimension will constantly be at the fore in any case. The Palestinians will exploit his visit to the Temple Mount and the Old City in support of their national aspirations with regard to Jerusalem. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who has met personally with Wojtyla on eight occasions since their first meeting at the Vatican in 1982, will do his best to present the papal visit to Daheishe as the Arab response to the Pope's visit to Yad Vashem. At a crowded press conference last week, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert cautioned the Vatican against casting any shadow of doubt regarding the "reality of unified Jerusalem, indivisible capital of Israel."

Some parties in Israel will try to portray John Paul's visit to the Wall as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. In any case, the Jewish state certainly has no need for papal sanction of its existence and policies, including those pertaining to the Holy City. It is quite obvious that a "slap in the face" such as the one received during the visit by Paul VI in 1964 would be simply impossible today. Israel is strong enough not to receive it and the Vatican is aware enough of the sensitivity of the issue not to give it.

Let there be no illusions, however. The Pope will not explicitly condemn the "silence" of Pius XII during the Holocaust, and is not expected to go beyond the encyclical of Spring 1998 on the subject of the Holocaust, or the request for pardon pronounced on March 13 before the crowd gathered at Saint Peter's Square. This, despite the fact that within the Church, Wojtyla is one of the most familiar with the horror of the Holocaust and most receptive to the subject, having directly witnessed it as a young man in Poland.

He will not offer such a condemnation, however, simply because he cannot. He will limit himself to saying that some Christians at times misinterpreted Church doctrine. He will condemn anti-Semitism and may even imply a denunciation of its Christian roots, but will go no further. Were he to do otherwise, he would be casting aspersions on the dogmatic principle of the Church and the Pope as the expression of God on earth.

In other words, explicit condemnation of Pius XII by another Vicar of Jesus Christ would be tantamount to undermining the very foundations of the Catholic faith. John Paul II is from a doctrinal point of view a restorer, a conservative prepared even to change the more progressive conclusions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and is unlikely to change course at the venerable age of 80.

In conclusion, let us return to our point of departure. The Pope's visit to the land in which Christianity was born offers the entire world a strong message of openness. The first non-Italian pope in 450 years is also the most traveled. Paul VI, in 15 years of papacy, made only eight trips abroad. Including this pilgrimage, Wojtyla will have made 92 trips since his election in 1978. In the past two years he has been, among other places, to Lebanon, India, Egypt, Africa and South America, nearly always drawing attention to the difficulties experienced by the Church: persecution of the Copts and the Maronites, the dangers of Islamic and Hindu intolerance.

At every opportunity, the Pope appeals to ecumenicism, but on his visit to Nazareth, local Christians will certainly remind him of the daily clashes with the Islamic Bloc. Thus, more than deepening the conclusions of Nostra Aetate (the Vatican document which in 1965 cleared the Jews of the accusation of "deicide"), he will be forced to address the dangers of fundamentalism and religious intolerance. Here in the Holy Land, rife with religious divisions and tensions, he may find few willing to listen.

Lorenzo Cremonesi is the Jerusalem correspondent for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

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Pope John Paul II standing on top of Mount Nebo, in Jordan, yesterday. Tradition says Moses first glimpsed the Promised Land from that site. The monument symbolizes Moses's staff which, according to the Bible, God turned into a snake.