Pilgrim8217;s progress

The ongoing visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel is one of the most ambitious the peripatetic Pontiff has ever undertaken. Unlike his firs...

The ongoing visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel is one of the most ambitious the peripatetic Pontiff has ever undertaken. Unlike his first visit to Poland two decades ago that signalled the first major onslaught on communism, this visit does not have much political significance. But, by his own admission, this is one visit that he had been longing to undertake ever since he became the quot;Vicar of Christquot;. The event is of far-reaching importance because for a Pope who is lucky enough to take Catholicism, if not Christianity, into the 21st century, there can be no better spiritual climax than a visit to the Holy Land in the Jubilee Year.

The desecration of the helipad where he was to land and the muezzin8217;s wail of quot;God is Great, and Mohammed is his Prophetquot; disrupting his mass at the Manger Square in Bethlehem were pointers to the challenges that awaited him. Small wonder then that an Israeli magazine had labeled the Holy Land quot;the lion8217;s denquot;. It is a tribute to his sense of adventure that he made bold to make the visit to a land where a false step or a wrong statement can cause immense damage to inter-religious relations. More so when the Israelis are yet to forget the last visit of a Pope Paul VI in 1964 when he traversed only the Christian areas and refused to utter the word 8220;Israel8221;. The Papacy has come a long way since then and it is no surprise that John Paul II did not find it difficult to reconcile what appeared to be the irreconcilable.

The apology for the errors of the Roman Catholic Church during the last 2000 years that he made on the first Sunday of the current Lent season provided the right backdrop for the visit. There are many who question the apology because it does not answer charges of the questionable role the Papacy played during the Holocaust under Pope Pius XII, it is too generalised to take into account the wrongs committed against the Muslims during the Crusade, not to mention the discrimination against women. But then they don8217;t answer the query whether any apology could have been adequately all-embracing. Moreover, who is to account for the wrongs committed against the community over the two millennia and apologise for them? What is most important about the apology is that it allows the successors of the present Pope, who is in the twilight of his career, to turn a new leaf in Papal history and come to grips with the challenges of the third millennium.

That a majority sees the apology this way is reflected in the tumultuous reception the Pope received on his arrival in Israel. The Israel question that bothered his predecessor has been settled a long time ago when the Vatican established diplomatic relations with the Jewish nation. His categorical assertion in Bethlehem that quot;the Holy See has always recognised that the Palestinian people have the natural right to a homeland, and the right to be able to live in peace and tranquillity with the other peoples of this areaquot; has opened a new chapter in Vatican8217;s relations with the new state. It is a measure of the Pope8217;s appeal that transcends the religious divide in a land considered sacred by three major religions of the world, he is able to have his voice heard. And with rapt attention.