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__ Papal Pilgrimage________________________
Focus on Unity
Ecumenism was at the top of the agenda as Pope John Paul toured three countries that share very little other than their Mediterranean locale.
By CWR Staff
On the first stop of his latest apostolic voyage, Pope John Paul II was denounced as an arch-heretic, and prominent Christian leaders refused to pray with him in public. At the last stop, the government declared a national holiday for his visit, and more than half the nation’s population attended an outdoor Mass. This, the 93rd foreign trip of his pontificate, was marked by sharper contrasts than Pope John Paul had ever previously encountered in his travels. In many ways it was the most delicate, and even the most dangerous, of all the Pope’s journeys.
Before the Holy Father left Rome on May 4 for his 5-day trip, the director of the Vatican’s Fides news service provided an astute preview of the trip. In an editorial that appeared in the Fides bulletin, Father Bernardo Cervellera wrote:
The Vatican organizers say this journey is the most difficult, not because of the Pope’s age but because of the consequences of millennial divisions, narrow-mindedness, old fights, and new wars. But the thicket of thorns through which he will have to pass does not frighten the aging Pontiff—who, to carry his witness of Christ everywhere, is determined once again to “put out into the deep,” just as he has encouraged the entire Church to do, in his recent letter Novo Millennio Inuente.
Vatican officials had ample reason to be nervous before this trip began. The Pontiff’s increasing frailty, and the fatigue that becomes more evident with each day of travel, are always concerns —to everyone, it seems, except John Paul himself. The first stop would be in Greece, where the powerful Orthodox Church had been openly reluctant to accept a papal visit, and firebrands promised angry public protests; there had even been death threats. Only at the last stop—in Malta, an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a rich religious heritage—would the Pope be on thoroughly friendly territory.
Into hostile territory
There are only about 50,000 native Catholics in Greece (although emigrants from Italy, the Philippines, and elsewhere bring the total Catholic population up to around 200,000). The Catholic Church enjoys no juridical status in the country, and Catholics often feel oppressed in a land where 97 percent of the population (that is, about 10 million people) belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church: the single Eastern Church that has been consistently most hostile toward the Holy See in the centuries since the Great Schism. While the Catholic Church recognizes the Orthodox as “sister churches,” in this case the recognition is not mutual. The Greek Orthodox Church looks upon Rome as an enemy, regards the Pope as a heretic, and does not recognize the validity of Catholic sacraments.
In June 1999, when he wrote of his desire to make a Jubilee pilgrimage to “the sites connected to the history of salvation,” the Holy Father included the Areopagus: the historic site outside Athens where St. Paul delivered the address that is described in the Acts of the Apostles. But Greek Orthodox leaders quickly made it clear that the Roman Pontiff would not receive a formal invitation for a visit. The Orthodox monks of the famous abbey at Mount Athos stirred up a campaign of propaganda against the Pontiff. The Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church announced that the Pope could come only if he apologized for the historical “errors” of the Roman Church, and in effect accepted the doctrinal authority of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. For many months a papal visit appeared to be impossible.
Then a breakthrough occurred: On a January visit to Rome, Greek President Constantinos Stephanopoulos issued a formal invitation for the Pontiff to visit. That invitation—issued to the Pope in his role as head of state for the Vatican—drew attention to another source of tension between the Holy See and the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. For centuries the Orthodox Church had been the dominant institution of Greek society. In recent years, however, the forces of secularization have made it possible for the government to defy the wishes of the Orthodox clergy. For the members of the Orthodox synod, the Greek president’s invitation to Pope John Paul was an unwelcome reminder of their waning political influence.
Nevertheless, once President Stephanopoulos issued that invitation, the Greek Orthodox bishops felt that they had no choice but to go along with the plans. If they continued to resist the papal visit, they would be seen as obstructionists, at odds with the policies of their own country’s government. So when Pope John Paul wrote to Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, asking the Greek Orthodox hierarchy to extend their own invitation, the Holy Synod did respond favorably—although the gesture was clearly made without enthusiasm.
In the weeks leading up to the papal visit, the tensions between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches continued to simmer. Archbishop Christodoulos wrote to the Holy Synod, assuring his fellow bishops that he would not join the Pope in any public liturgical event, nor would he accept an invitation to dinner at the residence of the papal nuncio. The Orthodox reception of the visiting Bishop of Rome would be proper but cool, he said, and the Pope would be expected not to spread the Catholic message but to apologize for Roman transgressions. The archbishop wrote: “The Orthodox Church will not recede from its truths of faith or betray its history, and the Pope will ask forgiveness for errors committed by Catholics.”
Such reassurances were not enough to calm the Pope’s most vociferous critics. The monks of Mount Athos redoubled their propaganda efforts, insisting that the Pontiff should be declared persona non grata in Greece, and asking the people to rise up in protest against “another of Wojtyla’s hegemonic tours.”
The mounting protests prompted the leading Catholic prelate in Greece, Archbishop Nikolaos Foscolos of Athens, to voice his misgivings about the prospects for the papal visit. “To be frank, I am not sure about the outcome,” Archbishop Foscolos told the Italian daily Avvenire in late April. The archbishop even worried aloud that “obstacles might arise at the last moment” to make the Pope’s trip impossible.
Archbishop Foscolos explained the Orthodox resistance in simple terms:
“Ecumenism does not exist in Greece.” Still, he told Avvenire that he held out some hopes for positive results from the papal visit. “The Pope knows how to make inroads into hearts,” he said. And at the same time, a Greek-born representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople made the more upbeat observation that the mere prospect of a papal visit showed that the time was ripe for ecumenical progress. Metropolitan Jeremy Caligiorgis observed that 30 years earlier it would have been unthinkable for a Roman Pontiff to set foot on Greek soil. He added that the Pope’s visit would “mark an important stage in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.”
(To understand the ecumenical challenges that the Pope faced in Greece it is important to remember that the Greek Orthodox Church led by Archbishop Christodoulos is an autonomous, self-governing body. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognized by the Orthodox world as the “first among equals,” but has no direct authority over the conduct or policies of the Greek Orthodox Church.)
A focus for protests
Two weeks before the Pope’s scheduled arrival in Greece, the more pessimistic predictions looked more realistic. On April 25, hundreds of Greek Orthodox rallied in downtown Athens to protest the visit, chanting, “Out with the Pope,” and waving banners branding the Pontiff as a “Two-horned Heretic.” Posters appeared on the streets of the capital city, portraying John Paul as “the Beast of the Apocalypse.”
“All monks, all clerics of Greece oppose the Pope’s visit,” claimed Father Nektarios, one of the organizers of the Athens protest, in a bit of hyperbole characteristic of his Mount Athos community. He explained that the opposition was justified because the Pope “has committed many sins against humanity.” A fellow protestor, Father Maximos, added that the Pope “is the reason for the schism of the churches.” And Giorgos Marcoulatos, head of an organization calling itself the Greek Orthodox Movement, announced: “It is wrong for the Orthodox Church to accept this visit. It offends against all the saints.”
Late in April, hard-line Orthodox leaders found a precise focus for their protests. The list of Vatican officials scheduled to accompany the Pope on his visit included the name of Patriarch Ignace Moussa Daoud, the prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches and a new member of the College of Cardinals. While the Greek Orthodox regard all Catholics as heretics and schismatics, they harbor a special contempt for the “uniate” Catholic churches—the Eastern churches, formerly aligned with the Orthodox world, who have sought and won a restoration of their full communion with the Holy See. As the former head of the Syrian Catholic Church, Patriarch Ignace was viewed by the Greek Orthodox as a traitor. Protestors insisted that if the patriarch stepped on Greek soil, Archbishop Christodoulos should pull out of any planned meeting with Pope John Paul. Rather than risk a confrontation, the Vatican announced that the Syrian patriarch would not accompany the Pope on his visit to Greece, but would instead fly directly to Damascus and join the papal party there.
In the face of entrenched opposition, Vatican planners were having other difficulties with the final details of the Pope’s schedule. The Holy See had hoped that the Holy Father could celebrate Mass on May 5 at an outdoor stadium that would accommodate 80,000 worshippers; government officials, citing security concerns, instead reserved a much smaller stadium, where only 20,000 people could gather. Because Archbishop Christodoulos adamantly refused to participate in any liturgical service, the Pope’s visit to the Areopagus was arranged as a quiet, almost private affair. He and the Orthodox prelate would together listen to a reading from the Acts of the Apostles, followed by a performance of Handel’s Messiah. They would each deliver a prepared statement, but there would be no joint prayer.
Still the Vatican could claim a few modest achievements in the planning process. While Archbishop Christodoulos would not pray with the Pope on the Areopagus, he did accede to the presence there of the Catholic Archbishop Foscolos. And the Orthodox prelate also agreed to an exchange of “courtesy” visits; the Pope would travel first to the Archbishop’s palace, and later Christodoulos would call on John Paul at the residence of the papal nuncio in Athens.
On the eve of the Pope’s departure from Rome, there were still confident voices insisting that the Pontiff—who had shown himself capable of meeting tough diplomatic challenges again and again during his years on Peter’s throne —would rise to the challenge in Athens. Father Yannis Spiteris, OFM Cap, a Greek theologian who teaches in Rome, told the Fides news service that the trip would be a success:
At the moment there is a lot of noise. But as soon as the people see that the Pope comes with humility, on a mission of love, and Greek Orthodox believers see a priest who suffers—a bishop to be admired, a pilgrim, not a conqueror—then the argument will stop and the hatred will dissolve.
The director of Fides, Father Cervellera, also saw the Pope’s humility as the key to his success. The willingness of a Roman Pontiff to humble himself had already brought one historic ecumenical breakthrough, he recalled, when “Pope Paul VI kissed the slipper of Athenagoras I.” As Father Cervellera saw it, Pope John Paul was willing to accept the onerous restrictions placed on his visit, and face the insults hurled by the monks of Mount Athos, in order to make a more important point. “John Paul II has accepted this humiliating path to bear witness to what unites Christians,” he wrote. “The humiliation accepted with love has something of the majesty of Christ scourged at the pillar: shunned by all, he unites all in an even stronger bond.”
In an interview that was televised in Greece on May 2, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that during his stay in Athens, John Paul II would emphasize the faith that unites Catholic and Greek Orthodox believers, rather than their differences. “There will be a time to discuss the problems,” Navarro-Valls said. But for now, he continued, “The Pope is going to Greece principally inspired by what unites the churches.”
A transcript of the Greek television interview with Navarro-Valls was distributed by the press office of the Holy See—an unusual step, which indicated that the Vatican was making a concerted effort to emphasize the positive aspects of the Pope’s trip. Steering attention away from the protests in Athens, Navarro-Valls instead observed that Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens would appear with the Pope on three different occasions, “and especially (they will) together read the text of St. Paul at the Areopagus.” This, he said, would be a “historic event.”
While downplaying the possibility for any dramatic breakthrough on the ecumenical front—he said that the Pope’s visit was unlikely to produce “great agreements” with the Greek Orthodox Church—the papal spokesman suggested that the symbolic gestures made by the Pope and the Orthodox leader might help to overcome suspicions and misunderstandings. And he diplomatically observed that Pope John Paul had already visited Greece—during the time when he served as Archbishop of Krakow—and had long admired Greek culture. During his previous visit, Navarro-Valls said, the future Pope gained a deeper understanding “not only of Greek philosophy, but also Greek literature, poetry, and classical theater—while he also came to love the islands, the sea, and the sun.”
The humble approach
Just before noon on Friday, May 4, John Paul II stepped off his airplane and leaned down to symbolically kiss Greek soil, becoming the first Roman Pontiff to visit that land in the millennium since the Great Schism. In keeping with the low-key tone the Vatican had accepted, the Pope was welcomed by a small delegation, including Archbishop Foscolos of Athens and the papal nuncio, Archbishop Paul Tabet. No representative of the Greek Orthodox Church attended the brief airport ceremony.
A representative of the Greek government did meet his plane at the Spata airport, but the formal welcome from President Stephanopoulos waited—according to Greek protocol—until the Pope arrived at the presidential palace. The motorcade from the airport to the presidential palace was covered by heavy security, but the noisy protests that had been predicted did not materialize. The Pope arrived in Athens without incident.
As he met with President Stephanopoulos, the Holy Father told the Greek president that he regards Greece as a cradle of European culture, since it was “in Athens that that there began the dialogue between the Christian message and the Hellenistic culture, a dialogue which would decisively shape European civilization.” That dialogue was developed by Christian teachers such as Ss. Basil and John Chrysostom, he added, so that “gradually the Hellenistic world became Christian and Christianity became to a certain extent Greek.”
The next stop was the most delicate moment of the Pope’s trip: a visit to the residence of Archbishop Christodoulos. There Pope John Paul seized the initiative, and stole the thunder from his Greek critics, by humbly asking forgiveness for offenses committed by Catholics against the Orthodox:
For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us the forgiveness we beg of him.
The Pope made a particular mention of “the disastrous sacking of the imperial city Constantinople, which was for so long the bastion of Christianity in the East.” That sacking, by Crusaders en route to the Holy Land, “fills Catholics with deep regret,” he said. The sacking of Constantinople nearly 800 years ago remains a particularly sore point in the Greek Orthodox memory, and a focus of complaints against Rome.
Pope John Paul told Archbishop Christodoulos that Catholics and Orthodox must work to overcome their historical antagonisms, which give rise to divisions within the Church. These divisions, he continued, are “a sin in the eyes of God and a scandal in the eyes of the world.”
The Pope also paid tribute to the Greek Orthodox Church, saying that Rome looks to Athens “with unaffected admiration.” He continued: “The universal Church can never forget what Greek Christianity has given her, cannot cease to give thanks for the enduring influence of the Greek tradition.”
While the Pope clearly went out of his way to avoid controversial issues, his host did not. Archbishop Christodoulos offered a warm welcome to John Paul II, but in his remarks he drove home the point that “the Greek and Orthodox people have suffered a great deal at the hands of the West.” The Orthodox prelate went on to mention two current disputes: the Eastern Catholic churches—whose very existence, he said, “has blocked dialogue between the two churches”—and the failure of the Vatican to support the Greek cause on the island of Cyprus.
A door is opened
However, while the first formal reaction from Archbishop Christodoulos was lukewarm, it soon became apparent that the Pope’s appeal for forgiveness would have a powerful impact. Yet again John Paul had scored a diplomatic coup; within a few hours of his arrival in Greece he had radically altered the climate of discussion between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.
“That request for pardon was very positive,” said Father Thomas, the chancellor of the Greek Orthodox archdiocese. The results were obvious within a matter of hours. Later in the same day, when John Paul appeared on the Areopagus, Father Thomas pointed out that “the members of the Orthodox Holy Synod spontaneously applauded the Pope.”
During the second meeting between John Paul and Christodoulos, at that ceremony on the Areopagus, the Vatican claimed a second ecumenical victory, with the promulgation of a joint statement by the two prelates—the product of long and tense negotiations between the two churches.
The Vatican had emphasized the importance of producing a joint statement, as an indication of ecumenical progress. But the Greek Orthodox Church had serious reservations about the project. The Orthodox Church wanted the Vatican to join in a statement about the continuing strife in Cyprus. The Holy See rejected that idea, explaining that the statement should focus exclusively on religious concerns.
There, too, the Orthodox expressed difficulties, since they were unwilling to endorse any statement that would imply acceptance of the validity of Catholic doctrines or even Catholic sacraments. One Catholic spokesman told the Fides news service that the eventual declaration came only “after a battle of nerves and a thousand difficulties.”
That statement bore all the earmarks of a compromise effort. There were no surprises in the text, and certainly no breakthroughs. But Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Christodoulos did agree to “condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism, and fanaticism in the name of religion.” More important, they agreed to pray for unity among “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Of course during his stay in Athens the Pope also met with the leaders of the country’s Catholic community. The meeting, which took place in the residence of the papal nuncio, gave the Holy Father an opportunity to encourage the Catholic bishops, who lead a small and often despised minority in an overwhelmingly Orthodox land.
The Pope referred to the Greek bishops as “frontier bishops,” and assured them that the Holy See supports their efforts to gain equal rights for Catholics. He also indicated that the Orthodox community should make an effort to achieve reconciliation with the Catholic Church. While pledging his support for ecumenical outreach to the Eastern churches, the Pontiff added that “these other churches, meanwhile, must not neglect to do their own part in the effort to restore communion.” Speaking at the Cathedral of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, he recalled that the saint for whom the cathedral was named was “one of the first Greeks who, upon hearing St. Paul preach on the resurrection, was converted.” And he urged the Catholics of Greece to continue spreading the message that St. Paul had brought to their land, working to bring souls to Christ and to promote unity among all believers.
Unexpected news
The remainder of the Pope’s stay in Greece was relatively uneventful. On Saturday morning, after the outdoor Mass in Athens, he returned to the airport—again unaccompanied by representatives of the Greek government or the Orthodox Church—and made his quiet departure for Syria.
As the papal plane flew across the Mediterranean, however, Joaquin Navarro-Valls gave the press an unexpected bit of news: Archbishop Christodoulos, who once made no secret of his opposition to a papal visit, had now thanked Pope John Paul for coming to Greece. The papal spokesman disclosed that the Greek primate had sent a personal message to the Pope, thanking him for his visit, and assuring the Pontiff that he would remember him in his prayers as he continued his pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul. “May our Savior Jesus Christ strengthen our will and our efforts toward mutual understanding,” Archbishop Christodoulos added.
Then Navarro-Valls dropped another bombshell. Although Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens had insisted that he would not pray with Pope John Paul II in public, the two men had prayed together during a private meeting. He revealed that that the joint prayer took place on Friday evening, when the Greek prelate visited the Pope at the residence of the apostolic nuncio in Athens.
Plans for the joint appearances of the Pope and the Archbishop had been delicately arranged, precisely because the Greek Orthodox leader had refused to participate in any liturgical celebration or common prayer with the Pontiff. Nevertheless, the Pope apparently won over the Greek prelate. Navarro-Valls revealed that the Pontiff suggested that they pray together, and the Archbishop warmly agreed. As the papal spokesman explained:
John Paul II, who was accompanied by bishops and cardinals from the Curia, suggested to his Beatitude Christodoulos—who was accompanied by seven Orthodox bishops—to recite an Our Father together, in Greek. The Orthodox primate immediately accepted the idea, and began to recite it.
In an interesting turn of events, the Greek archbishop left Athens shortly after the Pope’s departure, for his own trip to Moscow to visit with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksei II. That trip —which had been arranged well before the papal visit to Greece—brought together two of the Orthodox leaders who have been most outspoken in their opposition to the ecumenical efforts of John Paul II.
Patriarch Aleksei told the Greek archbishop that he was unmoved by the Pope’s request for pardon. He observed that the Pope had been speaking about past history, rather than addressing current disputes, such as the continuing controversy over the presence of Catholics in Russia and other traditionally Orthodox countries. But Archbishop Christodoulos left no doubt that the door was open to dialogue between Athens and Rome. “We are now waiting for further positive steps from the Roman Catholic Church,” he said.
From Damascus, where he was waiting for the Pope’s arrival, Patriarch Ignace Moussa Dauod assessed the overall impact of the Pope’s visit to Greece as a “tremendous success.” The Syrian-born prelate later explained to the Italian newspaper Avvenire that ecumenical relations with the Greek Orthodox Church had now been established. Efforts to achieve closer ties would require great patience, the patriarch cautioned, and progress would not always be smooth. Still, with his historic visit the Pope had “begun to batter down a wall, like the one in Berlin.”
A different climate
From an ecumenical standpoint, the Pope’s arrival in Damascus brought a welcome change in climate. The Orthodox and Catholic patriarchs of Syria enjoy extraordinarily close and warm relations. Indeed the Catholic patriarchs often seem friendlier toward their Orthodox counterparts than toward the Holy See. Even Patriarch Ignace, newly installed as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches, observed to a reporter that the Byzantine churches had suffered a great deal over the years at the hands of Rome.
When Greek Orthodox protestors rallied against the Pope, Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius IV Hakim of Antioch, head of the largest Christian community in Syria, took pains to distance himself from the Pope’s critics in Athens, saying, “We have our own Orthodox personality, and our circumstances are different.” Patriarch Ignatius told a reporter that when he joined with the Pope in an ecumenical liturgical service at the Dormition basilica in Damascus, “We will recite the Creed together, and then I will give a very strong and emphatic discourse of welcome.”
The history of Christianity runs deep in Syrian culture, and the variety of Christian churches there is extraordinary. The Greek Orthodox followers of Patriarch Ignatius Hakim form the largest single Christian community, but there are also large representations of the Melkite Catholic Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Maronite, Chaldean, and Roman Catholic as well as various small Protestant churches. Still, all these Christian groups form a small minority (about 7 percent) of the overall population, dwarfed in size by the dominant Islamic culture.
The Syrian government, however, was anxious to greet Pope John Paul for reasons having very little to do with Christian unity and inter-religious dialogue. The government of President Bashar al Assad saw the papal visit as an opportunity to rally international support for the region’s Arab states in their conflict with Israel.
Political considerations also caused the only real conflict between the Vatican organizers of the Pope’s trip and his Syrian hosts. Once again, the focus of the controversy was the appearance of a particular prelate on the list of participants in the Pope’s public ceremonies. Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon, had been scheduled to join with the other Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East in greeting the Pope. But the Maronite leader had also been leading a public campaign calling on Syria to remove its 35,000 soldiers from Lebanon; the Patriarch had complained that Lebanon was becoming a virtual fiefdom of Damascus. Would the Syrian government allow such an outspoken critic to make public appearances in Damascus? That question remained unanswered until Patriarch Sfeir announced that he would stay home, to avoid creating a distraction. The Maronite Catholic Church issued a statement saying, “It was the intention of the cardinal to participate in the festivities that would accompany the visit, if not for the unfortunate political significance attached.”
Diatribe against Israel
The greeting that Pope John Paul II received when he arrived in Syria on Saturday, May 5, was remarkable for its warmth (especially in contrast with the cool reception the Pope had faced in Greece), for the abundant evidence of ecumenical concord, and for the harshly political tone the Syrian president gave to the occasion.
Bashar al Assad greeted the Pontiff’s plane, along with a group of Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim religious leaders. The three Christian patriarchs of Antioch were all in attendance: Patriarchs Ignatius IV Hakim of the Greek Orthodox Church, Ignace Zacca I Ivas of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and Gregory III Laham of the Melkite Catholic Church. President Assad offered a hearty welcome to the visiting Pontiff, but then surprised Vatican organizers of the papal trip by launching into a virulent condemnation of Israel. Assad charged that the Israeli government violates the principles of equality “when they say that God created one people superior to all others.” Charging that Israel is governed by a racist regime, he said, “they kill the principles of heavenly religions, with the same mentality with which they tortured Christ.” Assad concluded by inviting the Pope to join him in battle “against the oppressors.”
In his response, Pope John Paul—who read from a prepared text—was much more guarded. He did say that “it is time to return to the principles of international law,” stipulating that this would include an end to Israeli occupation of disputed territories. The Holy Father argued that Jews, Christians, and Muslims—”the faithful of the three religions tied to Abraham”—should seek “a new attitude of understanding and respect among the peoples of this region.”
After the airport welcoming ceremony, the papal motorcade traveled to Damascus, where John Paul participated in an ecumenical service at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition. Again, the three patriarchs of Antioch all were present for the occasion. Speaking in French, the Pope noted that the Council of Nicea had recognized Antioch as the primatial see of the region. He voiced regrets that the patriarchate had later been splintered by divisions within the Christian community. And he spoke with hope about the “ecumenical rapprochement” that has been particularly noteworthy in the close ties between the Greek Orthodox and Melkite Catholic patriarchates of Antioch. Conceding that ecumenical progress becomes more difficult as it advances, the Pontiff said, “Let us beg the Holy Spirit to help us grow in holiness, because there is no permanent unity that is not built upon humility, conversion, and pardon.”
The Pope returned to the troubled political situation of the Middle East when he traveled to the Golan Heights, to issue a prayer for peace from a town devastated by war. The Pope made his plea at Quneitra, a town about 22 miles from the Israeli border. Quneitra was occupied by Israeli troops during the 1967 war, and every building was leveled before the Israeli forces pulled out. The Syrian government has not rebuilt the main structures of the town, leaving it instead as a memorial to the devastation of warfare.
Pope John Paul read his prayer for peace in the remains of a Greek Orthodox Church. “From this place, so disfigured by war, I wish to raise my heart and voice in prayer for peace in the Holy Land and the world,” the Pope prayed. He asked God’s help to “break down the walls of hostility and division in the region” and give both sides “the courage to forgive one another, so that the wounds of the past may be healed and not become a pretext for further suffering.”
Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls later cautioned reporters against interpreting the Pope’s prayer as a political gesture. “The sole objective and the sole reason” for the trip to Quneitra, he repeated, “was to pray for peace.” Navarro-Valls added that “people of goodwill will understand and can only appreciate this gesture.”
From Quneitra the Pope returned to Damascus, and to the quest for Christian unity. At a meeting with the Catholic bishops of Syria, John Paul emphasized the healthy diversity among the Catholics of the region, and the importance of preserving essential unity within the Church.
Remarking on the fact that the Catholics of Syria belong to many different liturgical and theological traditions—Melkite, Maronite, Armenian, and Syrian as well as Latin—the Pope said that the self-governing Eastern Catholic churches offer an important witness of the universal Church. He also praised the Syrian Christian community for offering an example of “true understanding among the patriarchs, bishops, and leaders of the different churches and ecclesial communities.” That example, he said, is a particularly powerful testimony to the Muslim majority of the land, showing that Christians love one another.
On Sunday, May 6, John Paul invoked the memory of St. Paul as he celebrated Mass for an estimated 40,000 people at the Abbassyine stadium outside Damascus. The Pope presided at a liturgical celebration according to the Roman Rite, but the congregation included many faithful of the Eastern Catholic churches, and the concelebrants included all the bishops of Syria. In his homily Pope John Paul reminded the congregation that he was traveling as a pilgrim, in the footsteps of St. Paul, who was converted to the faith on the road to Damascus. That remarkable conversion, he pointed out, “was decisive for the future of Paul and of the Church,” and continues to have repercussions even today. He urged the Christians who live in Syria today to imitate St. Paul by preaching the Gospel, passing the faith along to their children, and working for unity among all Christians. Pope John Paul II also visited the Church of St. Paul at the Wall in Damascus. That church marks the site where, according to tradition, the Apostle was lowered outside the wall of the ancient city so that he would escape from his own former colleagues: the zealous Jewish persecutors of the young Christian faith.
Another papal “first”
“It is a great joy to enter into this sacred shrine of Islam,” the Holy Father told Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro, the Grand Mufti of Syria. The Grand Mufti had welcomed him to the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus. John Paul became the first Roman Pontiff ever to enter an Islamic house of worship.
The Pope was greeted outside the mosque by the Grand Mufti and the Syrian government’s minister of religious affairs. After removing his shoes and donning white slippers in accordance with Islamic norms, the Pontiff entered the mosque for a short visit. He spent some time in private prayer before the tomb inside the mosque which holds the relics of St. John the Baptist. The Omayyad Mosque was originally a pagan shrine, and then a Christian basilica, before it was rebuilt as a mosque in the 8th century.
After his short visit inside the mosque itself, the Pope returned to the courtyard for an exchange of remarks with Sheikh Kaftaro. For the second time, the Pope heard a sharp denunciation of Israel, and responded with a quiet plea for cooperation between Muslims and Christians. The Pope expressed his desire that “religious leaders and professors of religion, both Muslim and Christian, will present our two important communities as partners in respectful dialogue, never again as communities in conflict.” Inter-religious harmony, he added, “will lead us to various forms of cooperation, particularly in service to the poor.”
On Monday afternoon, the Pope presided at an ecumenical service for young people in the Melkite cathedral of the Dormition in Damascus. “Although you belong to a variety of Christian confessions, all of you seek to hear the voice of the one Lord and to travel together toward him,” the Pope said. He urged them to be bold in their commitment to Christian principles, and untiring in their work to build a better society.
Then on Tuesday morning, having concluded his schedule in Syria, the Pope drove to the airport for his 3-hour flight to Malta. His departure, like his arrival, was marked by cordiality. President Bashar al Assad led a delegation of government and religious leaders at the airport outside Damascus to see off the Pontiff. John Paul told his hosts that he was “filled with a sense of gratitude” to the Syrian government, its people, and the Church leaders of the region. He once again stressed that Syria has a vital role to play in restoring peace to the Middle East, and he encouraged the Christians of the land to preserve their heritage of ecumenical friendship and cooperation. In his own remarks, Assad told the Pope, “If your Holiness ever wants anything from Syria, you only have to let me know.”
A Catholic heritage
The Holy Father was greeted in Malta by President Guido De Marco and Archbishop Joseph Mercieca. In his own remarks at the welcoming ceremony, the Pope reminded his audience that he was continuing his pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul, who was shipwrecked on the island.
Unlike the Pope’s previous stops, Malta has an unbroken history of Catholic cultural dominance. The island nation boasts a population of about 380,000, of whom 98 percent are baptized Catholics. About 65 percent of the population attends Mass each Sunday. The island is linked historically to the famed Catholic equestrian order the Knights of Malta, who ruled the island in the 16th through 18th centuries but are now based in Rome.
The government declared a national holiday, and two-thirds of the country’s citizens came out to participate in the ceremony, as Pope John Paul II presided at the beatification of three natives of Malta on Wednesday, May 9.
The crowd began to gather in St. Publius Square at dawn, and the scene became more colorful first with the arrival of many Maltese natives in vintage automobiles from the 1950s, then later with the ceremonial entry of the Knights of Malta in their black capes. An estimated 200,000 people braved the hot sun for the beatification ceremony.
In his homily, Pope John Paul traced the lives of the three Maltese natives who were beatified:
• Blessed Maria Adeodata Pisani (1806-1855) was born in Italy but moved to Malta in 1825 and spent the rest of her years there—most of them in the cloister of a Benedictine convent where she eventually became the abbess.
• Blessed Ignatius Falzon (1813-1865) left a promising career in law to become a humble monk, declining his bishop’s invitation to become a priest, and serving the children of the British soldiers garrisoned in Malta.
• Blessed George Preca (1880-1962), the founder of the Society of Christian Doctrine, was “a pioneer in the field of catechetics and in promoting the role of the laity in the apostolate,” the Pope remarked.
After the ceremony, the Holy Father —whose fatigue was now obvious to observers—returned to the residence of the papal nuncio, to rest, then boarded a final flight back to Rome.