Pope Retraces Pilgrimage to Holy Land

(20 May 09 - RV) As is tradition Pope Benedict retraced the highlights of his apostolic voyage to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, in his first general audience since his return.


Speaking in Italian to over 30 thousand Pilgrims in a sundrenched St Peter’s square Wednesday, Pope Benedict gave his analysis of his pilgrimage of peace to the Holy Sites of the Holy Land, and it’s Christian communities.

The Pope retraced the journey - which took place from May 8th to 15th - step by step, stressing the “respect for religious freedom” he witnessed in Jordan, the importance of coexistence between Christians and Muslims, the “universal warning” of the Shoah, and the need for all believers to “abandon prejudices and the desire to predominate”.

In Jordan, he recalled his visits to Monte Nebo and then Bethany beyond Jordan. Monte Nebo he said is “a site of strong symbolic significance, its speaks of our condition as pilgrims”. In Bethany he blessed the foundation stones of two new churches. Pope Benedict underlined how this fact “is a sign of the Kingdom of Jordan’s respect for religious freedom and the Christian tradition”. The Pope said he was given the occasion to express his recognition of this and respect for Muslims” in the visit to the “al-Hussein bin-Talal” Mosque in Amman. There he also recalled those places where still Christians live in difficult circumstances, such as nearby Iraq”.

Still in Jordan, Pope Benedict XVI recalled the inauguration of the Catholic University in Madaba, which he said “tangibly manifests the Churches love for the search for truth and common good, an essential first step to dialogue between civilisations”.

On the 11th he arrived in Israel “where from the very outset” he presented himself “as a pilgrim of peace. “For many it may seem impossible to break the cycle of violence” in the Holy Land, he added Wednesday “but “nothing is impossible for God and all those who trust in Him”. This was the message he said he wanted to bring to his visits with the Gran Mufti of Jerusalem and the Gran Rabbinate of Israel and to his encounters with organisations involved in dialogue.

Of Jerusalem, the crossroads of the three great religions, the Pope recalled that the very name of the city means that “All believers must leave prejudice and the will to predominate behind them and unanimously practise the fundamental commandment that is to love God with all our being and love our neighbour with all of ourselves”. “This is what Jews, Christians and Muslims are called to witness, to honour by our deeds the God that we pray to with our tongues”. This is he said “is what I carried in my heart as I prayed in Jerusalem at the Western Wall and at the Dome of the Rock”.
Of his visit to Yad Vashem. “Never – said the Pope – must we forget the tremendous tragedy of the Shoah: on the contrary it must always be in our memory as a universal warning of the sacredness of human life, which always bears an infinite value”.

In the Upper Room he said “I was able to meditate on our vocation to be one”, “to transform the world through the humble power of love”. Above all the Eucharistic celebrations in Nazareth and Bethlehem were “culminating moments of communion with Catholic” faithful. “Isolation, uncertainty, poverty all of these things which have led Christians to leave, but the Church continues its journey, witnessing the meaning of faith”.

In the Holy Land, concluded the Pope, “despite wars and destruction and even conflicts between Christians, the Church has continued in its mission, it is on the road to full unity”. On Mount Calvary and before the empty tomb, “I invoked the power of love, the only thing that can guide history and the cosmos”.