• Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Monday, May 04, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Pope Benedict XVI says his visit to the Holy Land will be as a 'pilgrim of peace': the pontiff's pilgrimage starts in Jordan Friday (May 8) and continues on from there to Palestine and Israel.

The Pope will discover a Holy Land greatly changed since his predecessor visited in 2000; he will have to tread even more gingerly than John Paul II to avoid becoming embroiled in the region's ever-more difficult political and inter-religious minefields.

A spokesman for the pontiff's visit, Wadi Abunassar, says that the Pope will strive to improve interfaith relations. But even prior to setting foot in the Holy Land, there have been difficulties - at the level of Jewish-Arab relations, through the fragile interaction between Christians and Muslims, and with sensitive Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Vatican and the new hard-line Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu share one thing: each is acutely aware of the need to do its utmost to shed negative impressions it has created - in terms of both pure politics and the politics of religion.

That did not, however, prevent an unpleasant incident in advance of the pilgrimage. Only last week, the Pope had agreed to grant audience at the Vatican to the visiting Muslim mayor of the Arab Israeli town of Sakhnin in Galilee, north of Nazareth. The visit had to be abruptly cancelled. The Vatican succumbed to pressure from the anti-Arab flank of the new Israeli government after a cabinet minister from the Yisrael Beiteinu party lashed out at Sakhnin's mayor, Mazen Ghnaim, a fervent advocate of coexistence between Arabs and Jews. The minister protested that the Pope should not host 'terrorists'.

The Vatican clearly did not want an additional row with Israel after a series of insensitive papal decisions and statements about relations between the Church and Jews. Catholic-Jewish relations soured earlier this year over the Vatican decision to lift the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a serial Holocaust denier. (Under intense pressure from Jewish groups and his native Germany, the Pope eventually had to back down).

Among Israeli political and religious leaders, the apology for that 'mishap' has largely soothed misgivings. The prevailing mood in Israel has not been entirely assuaged, however. What sticks in the memory of many Jews is that during World War II the Pope, as a boy, was a member - though unwillingly - of the Hitlerjungendt, the Nazi youth movement.

There are also residual grievances among the Holy Land's Muslims - stemming from the 2006 speech in which Benedict XVI quoted a mediaeval text that implied offence against the Prophet Muhammad.

In Nazareth, followers of an anti-Christian Imam, Nazem abu Salim, have hung a provocative banner across the main square adjacent to the Basilica of the Annunciation (one of the Church's main sites in the Holy Land): 'Those who harm God and his Messenger - God has cursed them in this world and in the hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment' reads the verse from the Quran.

There have long been simmering tensions between Muslims and the dwindling Christian community in the town where Jesus spent his youth, to the extent that Nazareth officials would not commit to removing the ominous banner in advance of the Pope's arrival to celebrate Mass in the Basilica on May 14.

Pope Benedict is clearly taking care not to raise unrealistic hopes about his visit. But popes are always posited by the faithful as repositories of historical memory and vibrant faith, and as nurturers of hope for a glorious future for all believers. As such, papal visits invariably foster great expectations.

No more so than in the strife-riven Holy Land, especially since this visit - only the third by a reigning pontiff - takes place in a climate markedly different from that which enveloped the Millennium pilgrimage. John Paul II had managed to create an aura of harmony - only to see it crash against the harsh reality of the Palestinian Intifadah uprising just six months later.

The present visit thus leaves Benedict XVI caught between ever unholy rocks and unforgiving hard places. The prospect of the promise of peace being fulfilled is deemed doubly challenging given the absolute lack of expectation among the peoples of the region, consumed as they are in a spirit of deep disillusion. While he has been careful to project the pilgrimage as, above all, a spiritual journey, the pontiff will still be taxed by the ever-present complications of the earthly world.

Many Palestinians remain disappointed by the Vatican's 'extremely mild' criticism of Israel's recent war in Gaza. Only a few hundred Palestinian Christians still live in Gaza, but the Pope will not be visiting them, and will not see for himself the hardship under which Gazans have continued to live since the war ended four months ago. Several dozen congregants have been promised a rare chance to escape the vicissitudes of life in the besieged Strip and to greet the Pope in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

There, Benedict XVI will come face to face with Israel's formidable security wall, a stark reminder of one of the daily predicaments for Palestinians. Apart from praying at the Church of the Nativity - traditionally the birthplace of Jesus - the pontiff will visit the Aida refugee camp, just a mile away. The gesture of solidarity might not prove much solace to his hosts. The eight-day pilgrimage concludes May 15. That coincides with the Palestinian commemoration of lost land and homes during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 - what they call the 'Catastrophe' or Naqbah.

The Pope's representative in the Holy Land, Archbishop Antonio Franco, maintains that the Pope has no intention of making any political statements during his trip. However, at the refugee camp and elsewhere he might find it difficult to escape such public scrutiny, and his homilies and words of comfort may inadvertently be translated from the spiritual realm into the political arena.

In a region where mistrust holds sway, one of the most sensitive moments of the pilgrimage may be another place of memory - the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. There, Benedict XVI's skill in communication and in building bridges across pain will be severely tested.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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