Christian leaders: Pilgrimages must change to help Holy Land peace
(July 21, 2011) Catholic and Anglican leaders have challenged Christians to find
new ways to establish lasting peace in the Holy Land, including changing the nature
of pilgrimages. International Christian, Jewish and Muslim delegates at the two-day
Conference on Christians in the Holy Land, at Lambeth Palace July 18-19, considered
concrete steps that might be taken by ordinary people to help to resolve enduring
tensions that have forced millions of Palestinian Christians to flee their homeland
in the past 50 years. The conference, organized by the Church of England and the
Catholic Church in England and Wales, was attended by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran,
president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The cardinal called
for renewed dialogue among followers of the Abrahamic faiths in the region, but he
also made a specific plea for the rights of the minority Christians in the Holy Land
to be guaranteed and respected. He said Christian communities were not founded by
missionaries sent from Rome or Constantinople but by the apostles and were a gift
to their societies and they bring cultural openness, a sense of the dignity of the
human person and particularly of women. Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury,
leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said on July 19 that the delegates had
looked for a "bit of a step change in Christian involvement here with the situation
of Christians in the Holy Land, a step change that will allow us to identify and support
specific projects more effectively." Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president
of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, expressed that British parishes
would be encouraged to work for peace and forgiveness, rooted in justice, for all
the people of the region. The plan includes charitable relief work, contact with people
in the region and in the Palestinian Diaspora, and the lobbying of politicians to
work for change.