National Jewish Scholars Project
John Paul II:
Pilgrimage to the Holy LandMichael A. Signer
Department of Theology
University of Notre DameOverview
Pope John Paul II’s arrival in Israel next month will mark the beginning of a religious pilgrimage. Aware of the international and interreligious dimensions of this journey to the Holy Land, his primary sensitivities will be to his own personal religious devotion and the pastoral care of Christians who live in the Middle East. These priorities virtually assure that his itinerary will be directed by concerns that are not identical with our own Jewish sensitivities.
The Pope will visit sites that focus on the life of Jesus Christ (such as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). How-ever, he will also use the occasion to further his ideas of penance and reconciliation -— first among the diverse and deeply divided communities of Christians, and then between Jews and Muslims. As Jews, we should be prepared to hear the Pope describe places in Israel in terms that are unfamiliar to us and that reflect his, rather than our, theological foundations. In his recent Lenten message the Pope called attention to these religious themes when he called upon all Christians "to accompany me with their prayers, while I myself on the various stages of the pilgrimage shall ask for forgiveness and reconciliation for the sons and daughters of the Church and for all humanity."
This will not be John Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem and the Middle East. In his early years as Bishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla participated in Vatican Council II. Between the second and third sessions of the Council, then-Cardinal Wojtyla made a ten-day trip to the Middle East. He went first to Cairo, and then followed the route of the Exodus, flying over Mt. Sinai and on to Jerusalem. He reported back to his fellow bishops in Poland about his moving experiences in a number of Christian sites in Bethlehem, Nazareth and the Galilee. He also described his experience standing at the Western Wall near the Temple Mount calling it, "a holy place for us Christians because the Lord Jesus called it the home of his father." One year later (in 1964, after the third session of the Council), he made a brief trip to Israel again.
John Paul first expressed his desire to make a papal pil-grimage to the Holy Land in his letter Redmptionis Anno ("The Year of Redemption") (1984). He repeated this wish again in a general audience in May 1991. The trip in March 2000 was announced in his letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente ("The Beginning of the Third Millennium") (April 1994), when he wrote, "It is my fervent wish to visit the places on the road taken by the people of God of the Old Covenant starting from the places associated with Abraham and Moses, through Egypt and Mt. Sinai as far as Damascus, the city that witnessed the con-version of St. Paul" (Par. 24). He reiterated this wish in November 1994 when receiving the credentials of Shmuel Hadas, the first Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See.
Israel and the Papacy
John Paul II is not the first modern Pope to travel to the Middle East. When his predecessor Paul VI went to the Holy Land in 1964, Vatican Council II had not yet pro-claimed Nostra Aetate ("In Our Time"), the document that reversed two thousand years of Christian negative attitudes toward Judaism. Paul VI’s pilgrimage was entirely focused on affirming the principles articulated in the early sessions of Vatican II that concentrated exclusively on the internal Christian concerns. The most important mission for Paul VI was healing the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. Israel as a Jewish State was only marginally a consideration. After the final session of the Council in 1965, Nostra Aetate became part of the teachings of the Church and within diplomatic constraints, Paul VI met with several promi-nent Israelis and ultimately held an audience with Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973. Pope Paul attempted on many occasions to speak out for peace in the Middle East. Yet he never succeeded in developing close ties with the international Jewish community.
In contrast to his predecessor, John Paul II has main-tained a delicate balance between expressing the desire for a just peace in the Middle East and emphasizing his deep understanding of the Jewish people’s tragic twentieth-century history. He has used the papal office –- in writing and in deed –- to advance the understand-ing of Judaism among Christians. For example, the picture of John Paul II kneeling before the memorial to the six million in Auschwitz, his embrace of Rabbi Toaff at the synagogue in Rome, and the arrangement of a concert at the Vatican to commemorate the Shoah are extremely important steps in raising Christian esteem for the Jewish people.
John Paul’s vision of peace in the Middle East was expressed in his first papal audience with represen-tatives from the Jewish community in 1979. First, he emphasized the need to foster dialogue among Chris-tians, Jews, and Muslims to create a foundation of trust that can ultimately lead to peace. Second, he empha-sized the need for Jerusalem to be a guaranteed center of harmony for adherents of all three religions. "Dialogue" and "Jerusalem" become the principle themes of John Paul’s discussions about the Holy Land. He has promoted these ideas before both Jewish and Christian audiences. Since the initiation of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, the Pope has used the occasion of his annual address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican to high-light the importance of a just peace, based on the firm foundation of interreligious dialogue, in Jerusalem.
Pope John Paul II’s Balanced Appeal
Abstract ideas -- like dialogue and guarantees of har-mony in Jerusalem -- have not been John Paul’s only approach to the Holy Land. He has explicitly advocated a Jewish understanding of the basis for the state of Israel. In a 1980 homily to Christians at Otranto, he recalled that the Jews, who had suffered "tragic expe-riences connected with the extermination of so many sons and daughters, were driven by the desire for security set up the state of Israel." Later that same year he addressed the Jewish community of Mainz, Germany, re-enforcing the connection between the Holocaust and the State of Israel as he prayed for the "destiny and role of your people among the peoples." The Pope clearly displays empathy and understanding for the Jewish people and our devotion to our homeland in this homily. At the same time, he also called for the recognition of the "painful condition of the Palestinian people."
Throughout his pontificate John Paul has never wavered from this "balanced approach," recognizing Jewish rights to security in their homeland and calling for just recog-nition of the Palestinian people’s legitimate claims. He reiterated these ideas in his 1984 letter Redemptionis Anno, reflecting upon the meaning of the Jubilee Year. This letter clearly outlines the religious claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims each have with respect to Jerusalem. John Paul’s vision is of a Jerusalem that serves as the meeting place of heaven and earth, as a place where all humanity can come together.
Pope John Paul II has utilized every opportunity -- before Jewish and Christian audiences -- to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. When he met with Jewish commu-nity of Vienna in 1988 he urged, "If only forgiveness and love are sown in plenty, the weeds of hate cannot grow. To remember the Shoah means to oppose every germ of violence and to protect and promote with patience and perseverance ever tender shoot of freedom and peace." At the conclusion of his pastoral visit to Brazil in 1991, he led a special prayer echoing Ezekiel 34:13: "Shalom in the land where that word is a greeting between friends. May our Jewish brothers and sisters who have been led out among the peoples and gathered from foreign lands and brought back to their own country to the land of their ancestors be able to live there in peace and security on the ‘mountains of Israel,’ guarded by the protection of God their true shepherd."
Pope John Paul II goes on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land as the first Pope to acknowledge Jewish suffering during the Shoah and its deep connection for security in a Jewish homeland. He is the only pope to visit the synagogue in Rome, make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz, and extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel. He is a pope whose deep pastoral mission to Christians who live in the Middle East has animated his vision of a region at peace. No doubt, in the exercise of these pastoral duties he will raise issues that speak directly to the needs of the Palestinian people. Even when some of these pronouncements conflict with what we Jews understand are in the best interests of our Jewish homeland, we should receive them as part of a dialogue that leads to peace.
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