Pope Francis departs on Holy Land visit

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has departed from Rome’s Fiumicino airport on a  three-day apostolic pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is due to touch down in the Jordanian capital Amman at around 1pm local time Saturday. The Holy Father will spend today in Jordan, and then go on to Palestine and Israel over the course of the weekend.  The trip marks the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s visit to the region and has a strong ecumenical element.

Philippa Hitchen is in the Holy Land. Lydia O'Kane asked her about the kind of welcome is the Pope is expected to receive in Amman and what the highlights of this visit will be.  Listen:

READ Philippa Hitchen's report:

The church and the government of Jordan have been preparing the warmest of welcomes for Pope Francis as he sets off on his three day visit to the Holy  Land. Philippa Hitchen reports………….

Even if Christians are only between 1 and 2 percent of the largely Sunni Muslim population, the Jordanian government has tried hard to be a pioneer of good interfaith relations in a region where tensions between Muslims, Christians and Jews are never far from the surface and often make news headlines. King Abdullah and his influential family are strong supporters of the moderate Islamic voice, organising all kinds of interfaith encounters and  promoting an annual World Week for interreligious harmony which will be highlighted during this papal visit…. In fact the posters lining the streets of Amman along the papal route proudly proclaim that the Hashemite Kingdom promotes “a civilisation of love and harmony.”

King Abdullah has already  met twice with pope Francis in the Vatican – the only leader in the Arab world to have done so – once for an official visit last August and then for an informal meeting ahead of the visit just last month.

The big highlights of the visit to Amman will be the Mass at the stadium where both Popes John Paul and Benedict XVI also celebrated in 2000 and 2009, plus the moment of prayer at the River Jordan, at the place where it’s believed that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. But I think one of the most poignant moments of this visit is the meeting the pope is having at the end of the day with a group of disabled young people and refugees in the church, still under construction, at Bethany beyond the Jordan. Among that group there are a couple of people with personal stories of real suffering to share with the Pope: one is a young Iraqi man who’s been a refugee for the past 23 years and the other is a Syrian woman whose husband was killed in the fighting. She fled to Jordan with her 6 children and managed to survive for a few months under a makeshift tent until, one night, a candle they were using set the canvas on fire and burnt the tent down killing 5 of her children. She and the surviving child are now being cared for by Caritas Jordan which is providing support for thousands of desperate people with similar tales to tell. With a population of about 6 million people, Jordan is now hosting a further 2 million refugees, most of whom are not living in official camps but trying to survive from day to day, still hoping for an end to the Syrian conflict and a more peaceful future for this troubled region. 

Awaiting the Pope in the Holy Land, I'm Philippa Hitchen.