Author: Matthew Campbell
Publication: The Sunday Times
Date: May 6, 2001
Having endured a bad-tempered lecture
from the head of the Greek Orthodox church, an exhausted-looking Pope John
Paul II yesterday took the road to Damascus where, in an effort to mend
fences with the Muslim world, he is to become the first Catholic leader
ever to enter a mosque.
Stumbling slightly as he emerged
into the sunlight from his plane, the frail-looking Pope descended gingerly
to the tarmac, where he was greeted by Bashar al-Assad, the gangly young
president who succeeded his father last year, and leaders of the Syrian
Christian Church.
John Paul was immediately plunged
into Middle Eastern politics, however, when Assad used his welcoming speech
to accuse the Israelis of killing and torturing Palestinians.
The Pope replied with an appeal
for reconciliation. "Real peace can only be achieved if there is a new
attitude of understanding and respect between the followers of the three
Abrahimic religions," he said.
Earlier, he concluded a controversial
visit to Greece with a mass for 18,000 of the country's small Catholic
flock, following a dramatic papal apology for the 13th-century sacking
of Constantinople.
The Pope sat impassively on Friday
through a tetchy speech by Archbishop Christodoulos, the bearded Greek
patriarch, who demanded an apology for crimes ranging from the sacking
of Constantinople, seat of the Orthodox empire, by Crusaders in 1204, to
alleged Vatican tolerance of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
Anger appeared to be defused, however,
when the Pope replied Catholics had indeed "sinned" and asked for forgiveness.
The Greek clergy burst into applause.
His latest of some 100 foreign tours
has been one of the most taxing: a week of protests by Greek Orthodox zealots,
for some of whom the Catholic leader represents the "Antichrist", raised
fears that even the Pope's traditional gesture of kissing a bowl of native
soil might spark a violent nationalist backlash upon his arrival.
However, the several thousand police
protecting his armour-plated Mercedes as it purred through Athens outnumbered
protesters and, in spite of the odd placard denouncing him as a "two-horned
monster", the Vatican declared success in promoting reconciliation.
The six-day "jubilee pilgrimage"
retracing the footsteps of St Paul - the apostle said to have converted
to Christianity in the first century after hearing the voice of Christ
on the road to Damascus - has taken the Pope to the very fringes of the
Catholic empire, where resentment still simmers over perceived injustices
perpetrated by the Vatican against eastern Christians centuries ago.
In Damascus a thin line divides
religion and politics and although the Pope, who celebrates his 81st birthday
on May 18, insists his visit is "personal", it was inevitable he would
be drawn into the politics of the region.
Israel asked for him to bring up
with Assad the fate of three soldiers kidnapped by Syrian-backed Hezbollah
guerrillas near the Lebanese border in October. The request was said to
have been made to the papal nuncio in Israel.
The Pope is also under pressure
from Christians in Lebanon to plead for a withdrawal of Syrian troops from
Lebanon amid suggestions that Assad, who complains that his country is
misrepresented abroad, may reap more benefit from the visit than the Christian
church.
While Vatican officials were reluctant
to discuss the extent to which the Pope would address political issues,
they emphasised that he would speak of his hopes for reconciliation in
the Middle East and might bless an "olive tree for peace".
After recently becoming the only
Catholic leader ever to enter a synagogue, he was planning to notch up
another first today by entering a mosque in central Damascus as a sign
of respect for the Muslim faith.
The first Pope ever to visit Syria,
he was also the first to have set foot in Greece, a predominantly Orthodox
country of 11m people whose Catholics number scarcely 50,000, since the
Great Schism of 1054 that divided Christianity into its western and eastern
wings.
On the misty slopes of Mount Olympus,
the mythical home of ancient Greek gods, Orthodox monks prayed for "divine
intervention" to stop the visit. Elsewhere there were noisy nationalist
protests in which the Catholic leader was branded an "arch heretic" and
"second devil". In a church in Athens, the appearance of blood-red stains
on the neck of a Virgin Mary icon was interpreted as a sign of distress
at the arrival of the Pope.
He did not seem that much of a threat.
He walks with difficulty since undergoing hip-replacement surgery seven
years ago. His hands tremble, a symptom of Parkinson's disease. He sat
through parts of the mass in Athens with his hands over his eyes.
The latest trip was greeted with
surprise by some of his closest advisers - and consternation by the four
doctors who accompany him everywhere - because of the physical exertion
it has required. "He is amazing," said Joaquin Navarro Valls, his spokesman.
"He just keeps on pushing ahead."
It grew out of the Pope's wish to
visit sites associated with early Christianity and this led him, with the
now mollified Christodoulos, later on Thursday to the site near the Acropolis
where St Paul delivered his "Ye men of Athens address". After his visit
to Damascus, the Pope will travel to Malta.
What looked in part like religious
tourism, however, was a bid to mend fences with Islam and Orthodoxy, and
to encourage a religiously divided Europe into breathing, as the Pope has
put it, with "two lungs".
So delicate was the diplomacy involved
that it took two years to work out the details of the visit. Even music
was a subject for heated debate. Orthodox leaders considered Handel's Messiah
"too western" to be played at the site where St Paul preached to the Athenians.
Ultimately, say experts, the Pope's
goal is a mission to Moscow, and the Greek patriarch travelled there this
weekend to brief his powerful Russian counterpart on the outcome of the
talks in Athens. The Pope will take an important step towards this with
a tour of Russia's largely Orthodox neighbour, Ukraine, in June.