A history of papal visits to the Holy Land
On
the eve of ' visit to Israel this week, we retrace the steps of the
three previous papal tours, which usually started in Jordan.
Pope Paul VI 1964.
Pope Francis I will be visiting
Israel for the second time this week, but hopefully this time his visit will
not be marred by war.
The visit marks the 50th
anniversary of the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Arriving May 24,
Pope Francis will be meeting with Jewish and Muslim leaders and visiting
important Jewish sites – and will wrap up the three-day stay with a Holy Mass.
His visit will be quite different
from the first, half a century ago, when most of the holy sites, including
Bethlehem, weren’t under Israeli control at all. Until 1967, they were
controlled by Jordan.
With his flight to the Middle East,
Pope Paul VI made history in more ways than one. Just elected a few months
earlier, not only was he leaving Rome, in itself quite rare; not only was he
leaving Italy, an event that had only happened a few times in papal history; he
was leaving Europe – and that was unheard of. Thus Paul VI became the first
globetrotting pope.
.By early afternoon that day, Paul
XI was walking onto the tarmac of a Jordanian airport outside Amman, where he
was greeted by King Hussein.
From Amman, the Pope was driven to
Jerusalem in a bulletproof car, stopping at the River Jordan to pray on the
banks of the river where tradition holds that Jesus was baptized. After a
ceremony at the Apostolic delegation to the Jerusalem, the pope proceeded to
the Old City.
Greeted by multitudes
The great multitude that came to
greet him in Damascus Square, many with palm fronds in hand, blocked his way
into the Old City through Damascus Gate. The Jordanian Police resorted to using
whips to clear a way through the crowd.
The pope walked down the Via
Dolorosa – the route along which Jesus is said to have carried his cross down
to Golgotha, the hill on which he was crucified, where the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre was built.
At the church, the pope held mass,
after which he returned to the house of the Apostolic delegation, where he
received private audiences. In the evening, he prayed in the Garden of
Gethsemane, which is where Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss and Jesus was taken
into custody, according to the gospels of Mark and Matthew.
Pope Paul VI t 1964.
The next day the pope left the
Apostolic delegation early, making his way up the West Bank northward, with
stops in Nablus and Jenin. Palestinian protesters periodically blocked the
motorcade, chanting “Palestine for the Arabs,” “Return our homes,” “Return our
land!”
One upshot was that the Israeli
leadership was stuck for over an hour waiting for the pope in the freezing
January cold outside the Megiddo Museum, at the site where Armageddon is
supposed to begin.
When the pope arrived, he and his
accompanying cardinals shook hands with Israeli President Zalman Shazar, then
with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and other ministers and dignitaries. The two
delegations sat across from one another and Shazar gave a speech welcoming the
pope to Israel, which was simultaneously translated from Hebrew to French.
When the president finished, the
pontiff donned his glasses and read his speech, which was simultaneously
translated from French to Hebrew. He ended his speech with “Shalom, shalom”
(Hebrew for "peace”), to which the crowd responded with enthusiastic
applause.
Pope John Paul II is aided by two
unidentified Vatican officials during a wreath laying ceremony at the Yad
Vashem memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem,March 23, 2000. Photo by AP
After the short speeches, the pope
and president exchanged gifts. The whole ceremony lasted less than half an
hour.
Then the pope left for Nazareth, which
had renamed its main street after the pontiff and decked it with Israeli and
Vatican flags for the occasion.
After a ceremony at the Church of
the Annunciation, the pope went down into the church grotto, where tradition
has it that the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus. In the
small underground cavity, he held a televised mass, followed by a speech.
After breaking his fast at the
adjacent Franciscan monastery, the pope proceeded to leave the city. As he was
making his way to the car, he was mobbed, but was carried away to safety by a
police officer. He entered the car and the motorcade left the city for Mount
Tabor, which is believed to be the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus.
From Mount Tabor the pope continued
to Capernaum, site of a series of miracles described in the gospels, as well as
home to St. Peter. He ate "a simple pilgrim" lunch in the Franciscan
monastery on the nearby Mount of Beatitudes, where the famous Sermon on the
Mount is said to have taken place. Then he was taken to West Jerusalem, where
he was welcomed in a ceremony by Mayor Mordechai Ish-Shalom and city
dignitaries.
Rescinding a 1,000-year old
excommunication
From there he proceeded to Mount
Zion to visit the Upper Room, traditionally said to be the site of the Last
Supper. After praying there, he continued to the Benedictine Abbey of the
Dormition for another ceremony, after which he crossed the border back into
Jordanian East Jerusalem, held some audiences and turned in.
Pope Benedict XVI prays before the
Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem, May 12, 2009.
The next morning, the pope held an
early morning mass at the Church of the Nativity, believed to be the birthplace
of Jesus, and then met with Eccumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of
Constantinople on the Mount of Olives. It was a historic meeting between the
leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, after hundreds of years since
the Great Schism.
This meeting would pave the way to
restoring relations between the Eastern and Western churches, and lead to the
rescinding of the excommunications of 1054.
Then the pope returned to Amman,
where he met with King Hussein once more, and boarded the plane that would take
him back to Rome.
Diplomatic relations
It would be many years until
another pope would visit Israel. First, diplomatic relations between the Holy
See and the Jewish state would have to be established. This would take place in
1993, under the pontificate of the recently canonized Pope John Paul II, paving
the way for a five-day papal visit to the Holy Land in March 2000, marking the
second millennium of the birth of Jesus.
During the visit, Pope John Paul
met with then Israeli President Ezer Weizmann, the chief rabbis, and visited
Yad Vashem (the official Israeli Holocaust memorial). He also visited the
Western Wall, where, as is customary, he placed a note to God.
Much of the visit was focused on
repairing relations between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church. The
visit was hailed as a success.
Five years later, Pope John Paul II
died and was succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI. In May 2009, Pope Benedict made
his week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, starting in Jordan but mostly spent
in Israel. He met with President Shimon Peres and other Israeli dignitaries.
Like his predecessors, the pope met with religious leaders and visited the
major Christian holy sites.
Like Pope John Paul II, he also
visited Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, at which he prayed. He met with
Jewish, Christian – including non-Catholic – and Muslim religious leaders, and
with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at Manger Square in Bethlehem.
Like the previous three papal
pilgrimages, Pope Francis' will also begin in Jordan.
While this is Francis' first visit
to Israel as pope, this is not his first time here. Forty years ago, many years
before becoming pope, the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio visited the Holy Land,
but he didn’t get to see the sites. Just as he arrived, the Yom Kippur War
erupted and he spent six days confined to the American Colony Hotel in
Jerusalem, studying St. Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians, before leaving.
