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Pope builds new links with Islam

Pope builds new links with Islam

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.
 


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