Pope John Paul II's Delicate Pilgrimage...03/19/00
By Jocelyn Noveck - Nando Media  

DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank - A high metal gate with revolving doors at each side stands at the entrance to this crowded and dusty refugee camp.

It is hardly one of the Holy Land's more moving sights. But for those who live in the camp, the moment Pope John Paul II glances at it - around dusk on Wednesday - will be a highlight of their lives.

The structure was once part of a huge fence surrounding the camp, erected by occupying Israeli troops. Jubilant Palestinians tore the fence down the moment Israel withdrew its forces in 1995. But they left the gate as a memorial and painted it the red, green, black and white of the Palestinian flag.

"This gate symbolizes our suffering," says Ziad Abas, one of 10,000 refugees at Dheisheh. "When the pope sees it - and more importantly, when the cameras focus on it - it will be our moment to show our plight to the world."

When the pontiff touches down at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport Tuesday on a flight from Jordan, he will be realizing a passionate dream: a Holy Land pilgrimage at the dawn of a millennium in the twilight of his own life.

But as he winds through Israel and the Palestinian lands, tracing the life of Jesus, he will be met at nearly every step by passions of a more turbulent nature.

Here in the West Bank, he will visit Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and meet Palestinians struggling for their own state. In Nazareth, the town of Jesus' boyhood, he will pass a square where plans to build a mosque have wrought tension between Christians, Muslims and Israeli authorities.

And in Jerusalem, where Jesus died, the pontiff will visit a city sacred to three faiths and claimed as a capital by both sides of the Mideast conflict. He will walk onto perhaps the most disputed patch of land in the world, encompassing the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and above it the Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam.

He will meet rabbis angered by what they see as the Vatican's pro-Palestinian stance and Holocaust survivors who accuse the Vatican of staying silent while Jews were exterminated by the Nazis. He will also encounter anger over his schedule, which some rabbis view as a desecration of the Jewish Sabbath.

All the way through, church officials hope to shut out the noise and focus on the purity of the pope's mission.

"Everybody has his own interpretation," says Wadi Abunasar, a Roman Catholic official in Jerusalem. "But we keep insisting: This is a pilgrimage of the Holy Father to the Holy Land."

It is a delicate pilgrimage, to be sure.

Tuesday: The pilgrimage begins

When the pope steps off his plane near Tel Aviv on Tuesday and shakes hands with Israel's president and prime minister, he'll be doing something no pope has done before him.

When Pope Paul VI came in 1964, it was three decades before Israel and the Holy See normalized diplomatic relations. During that visit, the pontiff never publicly mentioned Israel by name and he visited only Christian holy sites.

This time, about 70 Israeli officials will be on the tarmac for the historic moment. "The problem is figuring out who gets to shake his hand," says government spokesman Moshe Fogel.

The touchdown will also launch an enormous security operation. About 18,000 Israeli police and 4,000 soldiers will be mobilized for the six-day visit - a contingent larger than that organized for President Clinton in 1998.

The police official in charge, Brig. Gen. David Tzur, says simply, "This is the biggest operation we've ever had."

Wednesday: A visit to the West Bank

Despite the image its name evokes of a tranquil biblical hamlet, Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus, has all the real-life problems of a large Palestinian town. Each morning, thousands of day laborers cross into Israel, lured by higher wages. There were deadly riots here during the intefadeh, or uprising against Israeli rule; now, the town is run by the Palestinian Authority.

Until about 50 years ago, about 80 percent of Bethlehem's residents were Christian. Many have emigrated, and today Christians form only about one-third of the population of 50,000.

Manger Square, once a giant parking lot filled with the fumes of tour buses, has been revamped into a pedestrian plaza. Here, where joyous Palestinians welcomed the new millennium, thousands will gather for a papal Mass on Wednesday next to the Church of the Nativity.

But politics will also play a role, beginning with the pope's visit to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israelis fear the pope will reinforce a Vatican policy of supporting the Palestinian position; they were angry when a recent Vatican-PLO accord implicitly criticized Israel's declared sovereignty over all of Jerusalem.

The day culminates in a one-hour trip to Dheisheh, home to refugees from the 1948 Mideast war. The Vatican has sought to play down the political nature of the visit, emphasizing only the humanitarian side. But the refugees scoff at that distinction.

"It may be a humanitarian visit, but its inner meaning is political," says Mohammed Laham, head of Dheisheh's organizing committee.

Palestinians insist on a right of return for their refugees throughout the world; Israel refuses. It is one of the most emotional issues that divide the two sides.

No wonder Dheisheh's residents want to make the most of the hour they have in the spotlight. They plan to build 10 stages along the road leading to the camp, each with actors displaying a different aspect of the refugee experience.

"The only question is, how much can we show the world in one hour?" asks Abas, of the organizing committee.

Thursday: Jewish west Jersualem

The moment Israelis most eagerly await is the pontiff's historic foray into Jewish west Jerusalem, where he will visit Israel's president, its chief rabbis, and - most dramatically - Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial.

The visit to President Ezer Weizman will be a milestone: "a recognition," says Rabbi David Rosen of the Anti-Defamation League, "of the transformation of the Catholic Church's attitude toward the Jewish people in the land of Israel."

But the emotional wallop Jews are waiting for is a direct papal apology for the church's public silence during the Holocaust, which they hope will come at Yad Vashem.

Many Jewish leaders were both encouraged and disappointed on March 12 when the pope, in an unprecedented act of repentance, asked for forgiveness for the errors of his church over history. They admired his bold step, but wished he had mentioned the Holocaust.

Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau said he was "deeply frustrated" by the omission and hoped it was only because the pope plans a more specific apology during his Holy Land trip.

While most Israelis, particularly the secular community, say they view the visit in a positive light, signs have appeared in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods calling the pope "wicked," and right-wing militants spray-painted the message "No to Blasphemy - No to Meeting the Pope" on the walls of the chief rabbinate.

Friday: Prayer in the Galilee

The pontiff may breathe a sigh of relief when he arrives at the Sea of Galilee, the freshwater lake that is the site of so many New Testament associations. On this water, the Bible says, Jesus walked, and in its surroundings preached the core of his gospels.

Both a religious site and a secular paradise, the Galilee is the one part of the pope's itinerary not involved in some kind of controversy - unless one counts environmentalists' complaints that a new Mass site is destroying flowers and grass.

Bulldozers are still clearing paths on a huge hilltop above the Mount of the Beatitudes, where Jesus gave his famous Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5-7). Here, the pontiff is to celebrate the largest Mass of his trip, in front of 100,000 pilgrims, half of them youths from 80 countries.

On a recent afternoon, Father Rino Rossi led a visitor through a dangerous jumble of concrete blocks and loose electrical cords to proudly display a new sanctuary next to the Mass site. Workers were racing to finish it in time for a papal blessing.

"It will be finished in time," said Rossi, looking skyward. "I get my confidence from the Lord."

Farther along the lake, the pope will pray at the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, where tradition says Jesus made five loaves of barley bread and two fish enough to feed 5,000 people.

Father Stefan, who works at the small church, was already frustrated and overwhelmed by the attention. "We have other things to do for our community," he said. "There isn't just the pope!"

Saturday: A visit to Nazareth

Controversy returns with a visit to Nazareth, the town where the boy Jesus "waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom" (Luke 2:40). Here, the pope will say Mass at the modern, hulking Basilica of the Annunciation, built over the grotto where tradition says the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus.

The area just outside the church has been the site of a bitter dispute over the building of a mosque for Nazareth's Muslim community. The Israeli government backed Muslim demands to build it; angry Christians said the Muslims won because of greater electoral clout.

Christian churches closed their doors for two days in protest, and the Vatican, blaming Israel for the tensions, even threatened at one point to strike Nazareth from the papal itinerary.

If that weren't enough, the streets of Nazareth, an Arab town inside Israel, are piling up with garbage, due to a strike over wages by city employees. Schools are striking, too, because they have no cleaning services. The mayor is threatening to make a personal complaint to the pope.

March 26: Holy sites in east Jerusalem

The pope ends his visit in disputed east Jerusalem - annexed by Israel, claimed by the Palestinians, and home to the most sacred sites of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

For most Jews, the lasting visual image of the week will be the moment the pontiff navigates the few steps from his car to touch the Western Wall, believed to be the only surviving remnant of the Second Temple. Here, worshippers come to leave private notes in the nooks between the huge ancient stones. The wall is always open for prayer, so the pope will join everyday worshippers in his moment of reflection.

For Muslims, the key moment will come when the pope arrives at the hilltop they revere as Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. Known to Jews as the Temple Mount for the biblical temples that stood there, the site is a grand pedestal for the Dome of the Rock, the stunning gold-domed mosque that is the perhaps the most recognizable sight of all Jerusalem.

Finally, the pope will travel the treacherously narrow streets of the Old City in a specially reinforced "popemobile" to enter Christianity's holiest site: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Shared in an uneasy cohabitiation by six Christian communities, it is revered as the spot where Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead.

Inside this dense, smoke-blackened church, the pope will recite the noon Angelus prayer, to end the final Mass of his delicate pilgrimage.