PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND - May 8-15, 2009

DAY 1 - AMMAN
VISIT WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY

The last event on the first day of the Holy Father's pilgrimage was a courtesy visit with King Abdullah and his family at Ragadhan Palace.

King Abdullah and Queen Rania, who were married in 1993, have four children.













So far, only AP has filed the least toxic story about Day 1, with the usual extended jabs about Regensburg and Williamson (ZZZZZZZ!!!!) It's actually a lazy cop-out for the journalists - just recounting Regensburg and Williamson and tHE consequences already makes up at least half of their story. Still, much more civil than the LA Times reporter with the nasty hatchets who simply rehashed all the negatives he could come up with from his pre-arrival story into a Day-1 story. Avoid him like the plague!


Pope expresses respect
for Islam in Jordan
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON



AMMAN, Jordan, May 8 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI began his first trip to the Middle East on Friday, expressing his "deep respect" for Islam and hopes that the Catholic Church would be a force for peace in the region as he treaded carefully following past missteps with Muslims and Jews.

The Pope was given a red-carpet welcome at the airport by Jordan's King Abdullah II and Queen Rania and praised the moderate Arab country as a leader in efforts to promote peace and dialogue between Christians and Muslims. An honor guard wearing traditional red- and white-checkered headscarves played bagpipes and waved Jordanian and Vatican flags.

The trip to the Holy Land is the first for the German-born Benedict, who will travel on Monday for a much-anticipated four days in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Despite the lavish welcome ceremony, the Pope has faced sharp criticism in the Middle East — by both Muslims and Jews.

Benedict angered many in the Muslim world three years ago when he quoted a Medieval text that characterized some of Islam's Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith.

Earlier this year, he sparked outrage among Jews when he revoked the excommunication of an ultraconservative bishop who denies the Holocaust.

"My visit to Jordan gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by his majesty the king in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam," Benedict said shortly after landing in Jordan, a mostly desert country where Moses is said to have viewed the Promised Land.

He said Jordan was in the forefront of efforts to promote peace, inter-religious dialogue and to "curb extremism."

Later at a Catholic center for the handicapped, he said his only agenda was to bring hope and prayers "for the precious gift of unity and peace, most specifically for the Middle East."

But his past comments continue to fuel criticism by some Muslims, even though the Pope said he was sorry and that the quotes did not reflect his personal views.

Jordan's hard-line Muslim Brotherhood said before the Pope's arrival that its members would boycott his visit because he did not issue a public apology as they demanded. B

Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu-Bakr said the absence of a public apology meant "obstacles and boundaries will remain and will overshadow any possible understanding between the Pope and the Muslim world." [Speak for yourself, Abu-Bakr. Who anointed you to speak for 'the Muslim world'?]

The Brotherhood is Jordan's largest opposition group. Although it commands a small bloc in parliament, it wields considerable sway, especially among poor Jordanians.

A radical Islamic cleric who was once the spiritual mentor of the late Jordanian-born al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi also urged Muslims not to forget Benedict's comments.

"Whoever is welcoming this transgressive liar and dignifies him and honors him and overlooks his offensives toward the prophet of Islam and toward his religion, then it is impossible for him to be a person from the Muslim community of Muhammad by any means," Abu-Mohammed al-Maqdisi said, according to a transcript released by the SITE Institute, a U.S. group that monitors terror messages.

Al-Maqdisi fell out with al-Zarqawi for the militant's killing of civilians in Iraq and Jordan, but the cleric remains influential among some extremists.

Before landing in Amman, Benedict expressed hope his visit and the power of the Catholic church would help further peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.

"We are not a political power but a spiritual power that can contribute," Benedict told reporters aboard the plane. The traditional news conference was scaled down with the Vatican spokesman asking the questions based on previously submitted questions from reporters. In the past, some of his answers have stirred controversy, but he appeared to avoid that.

Asked about Catholic-Jewish relations, he said the two religions had common roots and that it should be "no surprise" that there were misunderstandings during 2,000 years of history.

Jordan's king praised the Pope and said the world must reject "ambitious ideologies of division."

"We welcome your commitment to dispel the misconceptions and divisions that have harmed relations between Christians and Muslims," said Abdullah.

Abdullah Abdul-Qader, a cleric at Amman's oldest mosque, told worshippers during Friday prayers to welcome the Pope's visit. "I urge you to show respect for your fellow Christians as they receive their Church leader," said Abdul-Qader at the Al-Husseini mosque.
[Thanks, Mr. Simpson, for reporting something positive!]

Christians make up 3 percent of Jordan's 5.8 million people.

Benedict's three-day stay in Jordan is his first visit to an Arab country as Pope. He is scheduled to meet with Muslim religious leaders at Amman's largest mosque — his second visit to a Muslim place of worship since becoming Pope in 2005. He prayed in Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque, a gesture that helped calm the outcry over his remarks.

The Pope is also expected to meet Iraqi Christians driven from their homeland by violence. About 40 young Iraqi refugees crowded into a tiny Catholic church in Amman on Friday, nervously practicing their last lesson before Benedict administers their first communion on Sunday.

"I really want to meet the Pope," said Cecile Adam, an 11-year-old whose family fled Baghdad. "I think he can do something to help Iraq because Jesus gave him a good position and Jesus wants us to be happy."





John Thavis of CNS comes through with his Day 1 wrap-up - still incomplete but at least he touched on all the major points

Pope opens Holy Land visit
with call for tolerance
and visit to disabled
By John Thavis




AMMAN, Jordan, May 8 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI began an eight-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land Monday with an appeal for tolerance and a gesture of charity.

Arriving in Jordan May 8, the 82-year-old Pontiff expressed his "deep respect for the Muslim community" and paid tribute to interfaith dialogue initiatives launched by Jordanian leaders.

"We can say that these worthy initiatives have achieved much good in furthering an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world, confounding the predictions of those who consider violence and conflict inevitable," he said in a speech at the Amman airport.

An hour later, the Pope made the first stop of his pilgrimage: a visit to several hundred men and women served by a church-run center for the disabled in Amman. There he spoke movingly of the struggle to make sense of suffering and the church's effort to help the afflicted.

The Pope was making his first trip to an Arab country, the first leg of a journey that was later to take him to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He was met at Queen Alia International Airport outside Amman by Jordan's King Abdullah II, who has championed interfaith dialogue and defended the historic protection of religious minorities in the predominantly Muslim country.

The Pope commended Jordan for curbing extremism and said its leaders had promoted "a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam."

Pope Benedict said he had come to Jordan as a pilgrim to visit Christian holy places, including Mount Nebo, from which Moses saw the Promised Land, and the Jordan River, where Christ was baptized.

He said the fact that he would bless foundation stones for new churches near the baptism site reflected well on Jordan's respect for religion and protection of religious rights.

"Religious freedom is, of course, a fundamental right, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world," he said.

The Pope praised the country's leaders for supporting efforts to find a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In late April, King Abdullah met with U.S. President Barack Obama and urged him to make decisive moves for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, warning that a new Middle East war could erupt if no real progress is made over the next 18 months.

The King met more recently with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to try to relaunch serious peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis based on a two-state solution.

The Pope favorably noted Jordan's welcoming of refugees from Iraq. Jordan has absorbed an estimated 700,000 Iraqi refugees, including some 70,000 Christians, according to Church sources.

Outside the airport, hundreds of schoolchildren cheered as the papal motorcade passed. Wearing kaffiyehs and papal-visit caps, they waved Vatican flags and held banners with various welcome messages written in Arabic.

The Pope's stop at the Regina Pacis center underscored the Church's efforts to meet a serious health care need in Jordan. It is estimated that 10 percent of Jordanian young people under age 19 suffer from a serious disability.

The ultramodern center is operated by three Comboni Missionary Sisters and a team of teachers, therapists and volunteers to educate and care for Muslims and Christians with disabilities free of charge.

The Pontiff arrived at the center to loud cheers, and he waded into a huge crowd of well-wishers as a band played the "gerpe" -- a Jordanian bagpipe -- and tabla, or hand drums.

In a speech, he acknowledged that it's sometimes "difficult to find a reason for what appears only as an obstacle to be overcome or even as a pain -- physical or emotional -- to be endured."

Faith in God and his unconditional love provides the necessary perspective, and prayer can help heal spiritual and emotional wounds, he said.

The Pope told the crowd at the center that, unlike pilgrims of old, he had not come bearing gifts or offerings.

"I come simply with an intention, a hope: to pray for the precious gift of unity and peace, most specifically for the Middle East," he said.

Later, the Pope met with King Abdullah, Queen Rania, his wife, and other members of the royal family at their palace. The two leaders held private talks, posed for photographers and exchanged gifts.

En route to Jordan, the Pope spoke briefly with reporters aboard his Alitalia charter jet, saying he hoped his pilgrimage would aid the Middle East peace process by highlighting the value of prayer and convincing people to leave behind factional interests.

"We are not a political power but a spiritual force, and this spiritual force is something that can contribute to progress in the search for peace," the Pope said.

As believers, he said, Christians are convinced of the power of prayer.

"It opens the world to God, and we are convinced that God listens and can work in history. And I think that if millions of believers pray this is truly a force that can have an influence and advance the cause of peace," he said.

The Pope said it was a difficult time for the beleaguered Christian population in the Holy Land, but also a time of hope, of a "new beginning and new effort on the way of peace."

Christian communities are an important component of the life of Middle Eastern countries, and the Church wants to encourage them to have the "courage, the humility and the patience to remain in these countries," he said.

For their part, he said, the Christian communities contribute to society especially through their networks of schools and hospitals. Schools in particular -- including the university the Pope will lay the foundation stone for in Jordan -- help bring Christians and Muslims together, he said.

"They meet here and speak to each other. It's also a place where a Christian elite is formed that is prepared precisely to work for peace," he said.

The Pope was scheduled to visit a major mosque in Amman the next day and speak to a group of Muslim academics and international diplomats.

Contributing to this story were Cindy Wooden and Doreen Abi Raad in Amman.





I am starting to dread it when I see John Allen's byline anywhere, but at least this one isn't half as silly as the piece he did for the New York Times - especially now that the Pope himself has 'set him (Allen) straight'. All that Henry Kissinger-Hillary Clinton role-playing for nothing.

Nope, the Pope's 'diplomacy' is God's diplomacy. No geopolitical strategies, thank you - just prayer (lots of it), conscience formation, and speaking to reason (Logos). The man in white said so clearly on the plane.



Emphasis on Islam makes
Pope's trip an original
By John L Allen Jr

May 8, 2909



From the outside, it might be tempting to see Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the Holy Land this week as a replay of John Paul II's celebrated March 2000 performance, only with a less charismatic Pontiff in the starring role.

[It is unimaginable, to begin, with that anyone who remotely appreciates the virtues of Joseph Ratzinger would even come close to thinking that the man had or has any intentions of simply following in his predecessor's footsteps or copying anyone except Christ.

The man has been an original all his life - and it's not because he asserts himself as such. but because God made him one. In the same way he made Karol Wojtyla a true original. Benedict is not John Paul II, and it's a different time, with vastly different circumstances. And that's all there is to it. Nothing arcane that needs deciphering!]

The fact that Benedict has chosen to start by spending three full days in Jordan, however, offers a clue that something is clearly different [A clue??? It's so obvious you couldn't possibly miss it!]

Benedict landed in Amman this afternoon, opening his keenly anticipated May 8-15 swing through Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Nine years ago, John Paul spent only 24 hours in Jordan. As it happens, Jordan is the first Arab country Benedict has visited, and his comparatively lengthy stay points to an important insight: Islam looms far larger today than the last time a Pope came to the Holy Land.

[Oooohhhh, insight! How does something as blatantly in your face as 9/11 - and everything happening in Eurabia - require any more than a skin-crawling sense of doom to realize jow large Islam looms in today's world? That's not insight - that's visceral knowledge in your very gut and every nerve!]

Two epochal events have combined to propel Islam to the forefront of Catholic consciousness. In short-hand fashion, one might call them 9/11 and 9/12.

The first refers to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the terrifying prospect of a global conflict between Islam and the West they seemed to herald. The second evokes Benedict XVI's famous speech at the University of Regensburg, delivered on Sept. 12, 2006.

On that occasion, Benedict cited a Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, brought "things only evil and inhuman, such as the command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The speech set off a firestorm which had the paradoxical effect of both disrupting, and yet also energizing, Catholic-Muslim relations.

Benedict's trip, therefore, isn't a photocopy. It's an original, the first papal voyage to the Holy Land in which attention to Islam doesn't take a back burner to other priorities, above all the relationship with Judaism. [Oh, he seems to always have excelled at multi-tasking, our Joseph/Benedict! No one-trick pony, he.]

The Pope struck a note of Christian-Muslim harmony immediately this afternoon, expressing "deep respect for the Muslim community" during a brief welcoming ceremony at Amman's Queen Alia International Airport.

In a break with protocol, Jordan's King Abdullah II drove out to the airport [piloted his own helicopter, according to Queen Rania] to personally welcome the Pontiff. In another gesture of deference, Abdullah II delivered his remarks in English, but provided translations in both Italian and Latin, a rarity on papal travels. [Well, the education at Deerfield, Sandhurst and Georgetown wasn't a waste, obviously.]

Benedict XVI is the third modern Pope to visit Jordan, the first being Paul VI in 1964. [Did any ancient Popes visit??? Vatican Radio's dossiers say no.] The Vatican has long looked to Jordan as a model of Christian-Muslim coexistence, in part because the country's Hashemite monarchy, which claims direct descent from Muhammad, sees itself as a natural leader of Islam's center. Jordan is also perhaps the most reliable U.S. ally in the Middle East. [Really? Aren't you forgetting Israel????]

Benedict also owes the Jordanians a particular debt of gratitude, since it was the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman that spearheaded a positive 2006 response from 38 Islamic scholars after the Regensburg speech, and followed that up with an open letter in 2007 titled "A Common Word," this one signed by 138 Muslim leaders. Both gestures are credited with getting Muslim-Christian relations back on track in the wake of Regensburg. [No, both gestures were a response to Regensburg's call for reason and dialog! All of a sudden, Bneedct XVI gets no credit for this development????]]

Today, Benedict tipped his cap to his hosts.

"The opportunity that Jordan's Catholic community enjoys to build public places of worship is a sign of this country's respect for religion," Benedict told Abdullah. "I want to say how much this openness is appreciated."

Referring to Jordan's efforts at inter-faith dialogue, Benedict said they promote "an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world, confounding the predictions of those who consider violence and conflict inevitable."

Abdullah II himself is a Western-educated figure, who among other things has studied at a Catholic university. In 1987, he was a mid-career fellow at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and in 2005 Georgetown awarded him an honorary doctorate.

In his welcome, Abdullah told Benedict that Muslims and Christians must join forces against "voices of provocation:" and "ambitious ideologies of division" that "threaten unspeakable suffering."

Jordanian Catholic Rateb Rabie, who today heads the U.S.-based Holy Land Ecumenical Foundation, said that his native country walks its talk.

"It really is a moderate country," Rabie said. "They're not just trying to show that image to the world, but it's who they are."

Other local observers, however, caution against an overly idyllic view. Jesuit Fr. Kevin O'Connell, a Bostonian who's been in Jordan for 13 years as pastor of Amman's English-speaking parish, describes Catholic-Muslim relations as "OK" rather than "stunning."

"It's true that Jordan works very hard to be a place where Muslims and Christians can live with one another, understand each other and respect each other," O'Connell said. "No one feels unsafe going to Church, or being identified as a Christian, which is very different from some other countries in the region."

Nonetheless, O'Connell said, there are some "neuralgic" issues -- above all, conversion and inter-marriage. Both are tied up with Jordan's Islamic identity; any Muslim who wishes to convert to another religion is subject to various forms of official and unofficial persecution, and intermarriage is difficult, especially if a non-Muslim man wants to marry a Muslim woman (since religious affiliation is believed to come from the father.)

O'Connell said that he's worked with a handful of converts – most of whom, he said, eventually decide to leave the country, in some cases requesting asylum on the grounds of religious persecution.

"This has to be grappled with," he said. [Yes, but it's not just because of tradition that goes back to the time of Mohammed; the structures about intermarriage and conversion are also part and parcel of Islamic doctrine! That's as tough to overturn as the Catholic ban on married priests]

If today's exchange between Pope and King represented the most senior level of Catholic-Muslim relations, Benedict's visit later this afternoon to Regina Pacis, a church-run center for mentally and physically disabled youth, illustrated the ties at the grassroots.

Christians are less than three percent of the population in Jordan, which among other things means that most of those served by the Regina Pacis Center are Muslims, as are many of the staff members (though the center is run by three Comboni sisters.)

Regina Pacis offers both medical services and courses of formation, so that disabled youth can eventually hold jobs and manage relationships in the wider society.

Benedict told his mixed Muslim-Christian crowd at the center that he does not come "bearing gifts or offerings," but rather with "an intention, a hope: to pray for the precious gift of unity and peace, most specifically for the Middle East."

Earlier in the day, aboard the papal plane, Benedict told reporters that he hopes to make a contribution to peace in the Middle East – not as a "political party," but through prayer, the formation of conscience, and an emphasis on reason.

Benedict emphasized the shared spiritual heritage among Jews, Muslims and Christians, though he conceded that misunderstandings from time to time are probably inevitable.

Speaking specifically of Christianity and Judaism, the Pope added a typically professorial flourish -- saying that after 2,000 years apart, each faith now has its own "semantic cosmos."

"We have to learn to speak one another's language," Benedict said.

For a Pope who has had occasional difficulties doing precisely that, the admission seemed to signal a determination this time around to stay "on message." [Ach, du lieber Gott! There he goes again with his buzz words that are so devalued by overuse and misuse they no longer mean anything!. 'Staying on message' indeed. When did Joseph Ratzinger ever not stay on message - seeing as his message has always been one and the same and consistent: God is the answer and we know him best in Christ and through Christ.]

Clearly, a large part of that message is telling his Muslim hosts that he's serious about détente. [Did anyone really think before this that he was not?????] A Pope cannot be 'not serious' on anything he says!