Pope Paul VI visited the Holy Land 50 years ago!
Vatican City, 4 January 2014: 50 years ago, on 4th January, Pope Paul VI
went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was for the first time that a Successor
of Peter returned to the land of Jesus. The 3-day visit of the Pontiff was also the
first international trip of the Popes in contemporary times. In an interview with
Vatican Radio’s Alexander Gisotti, William Shomali, Auxiliary Bishop of Jerusalem,
then a young seminarian, recaptures the event. Recalling the Pope’s visit, Bishop Shomali said that it was a very cold morning, when Paul VI came to Bethlehem to celebrate Mass at the Grotto of the Nativity. No Pope had come before! Some of his homilies have become a "classic", especially the homily he gave in Nazareth on the family, we can still quote it as if it were still relevant today. His visit has paved the way for subsequent visits.
The Pope’s visit also had a great ecumenical significance. He gave a lot of value to the meeting with Athenagoras and the fact that they prayed together the Lord's Prayer on the Mount of Olives. From an ecumenical point of view, the visit was very special.
Prof. Agostino Giovagnoli, professor of contemporary history at the ‘Catholic’ in Milan on the importance of this anniversary and its relevance, told Vatican Radio’s Alexander Gisotti that he sees in the visit of Pope Paul VI ‘a preview of the invitation we recently heard from Pope Francis, an invitation to go out, to a church that is no longer self-referential but that goes out to others.
The journey of Paul VI is placed deeply into the spirit of the 2nd Vatican Council - the spirit of openness, and meeting. Above all, it is a Church that is in the world, through the figure of its chief representative, the Pope, and does not wait within the reality of Rome but moves towards the world and especially back to the roots, the roots represented by Jerusalem.
It was an absolutely sensational event. It has been a great impact on public opinion, and when he returned to Rome, the Romans gave him a very warm welcome spontaneously, something quite unusual in a city ‘accustomed’ to the Pope.
But the heart of the journey was certainly the meeting with the Patriarch Athenagoras, and the image of the embrace of Paul VI and Athenagoras had an unsettling effect: the Catholic world was not accustomed to that. The gesture was so intense because it was after nine centuries of division and after the two churches were excommunicated each other. That one gesture, in the history of contemporary ecumenism, has opened new horizons, which was absolutely unthinkable a few years earlier, added Prof Agostino.
Source: VR Sedoc
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