TEL AVIV, Israel (March 21, 2000 4:11 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Pope John Paul II arrived in Israel on Tuesday, making the first official visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to the Jewish state and embarking on his own long-held dream of walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ at the dawn of Christianity's third millennium.

In a sign of the enormous importance the Jewish state attaches to this historic visit, virtually the entire Israeli government - from the prime minister and president on down - was on hand to greet the aging, ailing spiritual leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics.

John Paul stepped off his Royal Jordanian plane onto the flower-bedecked, red-carpeted tarmac at Ben Gurion International Airport. Three children from Jesus' boyhood town of Nazareth - one Jewish, one Muslim and one Christian - were included in the welcoming ceremony, held under gray, rain-heavy skies.

The pomp and ceremony stood in stark contrast to the last papal visit, an unofficial one in 1964, three decades before the Vatican and Israel would establish diplomatic ties. During that trip, Pope Paul VI never publicly uttered the name of the state of Israel.

Clad in white robes, the 79-year-old pontiff slowly emerged from the plane to a flourish of trumpets from an Israeli honor guard. His white skullcap blew off in the wind as he made his way slowly down the steps, clutching the rail. As he reached the bottom, he was handed a cane.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Ezer Weizman approached the pope and shook his hand. "Welcome to the Holy Land," Barak said, just after John Paul touched his lips to a bowl containing Israeli soil.

Afterwards, the pope made his way slowly along a red carpet, Barak and Weizman at his sides. A military band struck up several tunes and Israeli officers saluted the pontiff.

Although the pope's journey has been billed as a mainly personal and spiritual one, it is unavoidably freighted with political significance. The coming days will bring him to some of the region's most hotly contested sites, including Jerusalem's walled Old City, home to shrines sacred to all three monotheistic faiths.

The journey - perhaps the crowning pilgrimage of John Paul's 22-year papacy - will also take him to the biblical heartland of Galilee in northern Israel, the setting for many of Jesus' teachings, and to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the town of Christ's birth and the pontiff's only stop in territory held by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Earlier, in Jordan, the pope celebrated a Mass before a crowd of 40,000 cheering faithful in an Amman soccer stadium. The fragile pontiff was greeted with chants of "Viva, Papa," as his glass-enclosed popemobile made a lap around the stadium.

Throughout his two-day stop in Jordan, the pontiff got a warm reception from the small Christian community, as well as the country's Muslim leadership.

At the stadium, many in the crowd wore T-shirts that featured both the pope and King Abdullah II and read, "Jordan welcomes John Paul II." Muslim members of the royal family, including the king's mother, were among the crowd.

Before leaving for Israel, the pope also visited the village of Wadi al-Kharrar overlooking the east bank of the Jordan River, where some religious scholars and archaeologists say Jesus was baptized. Jordan's Royal Guards, mounted on black and white Arabian stallions, stood watch as the pope briefly addressed several thousand people among the wind-whipped sands of the Jordan Valley.

"On the banks of the River Jordan, you (God) raised up John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness ... to prepare the way of the Lord, to herald the coming of Jesus," the pope said, his soft voice all but drowned out by the strong gusts of wind.

The Jordanians claim that John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the springs that feed the nearby river. But that assertion has sparked a cross-border rivalry with Israel, which has long maintained that Jesus was baptized on the river's west side, now under Israeli military control.

John Paul will be traveling to the Israeli site Wednesday. The Vatican has not taken a position on either side's claim, and the dispute may have as much to do with tourism revenue as religious scholarship.

The pope arrived in Israel at a time when discord involving the region's religions continues apace.

The tussle over the future of the Palestinian territories remains unresolved - on Monday night, three Israelis were injured in a shooting in the West Bank, and Israeli soldiers later opened fire on a car driven by a Palestinian couple, killing the wife and wounding her husband. Israel and Syria are still working toward peace as low-level fighting persists in the section of Lebanon that Israel has occupied for more than 15 years.

Mainstream Jewish leaders welcome the pope's visit and his statements promoting reconciliation among faiths. But they would like him to go further in acknowledging the church's past discrimination against Jews and its public silence during the Holocaust.

Israel has planned its biggest security operation ever for the pope's trip, and some Jewish and Palestinian
groups are expected to use the occasion to press their claims for control of Jerusalem.

The pope has acknowledged the region's political strife despite his insistence that the trip is not meant to
address it.

John Paul is "not coming with a political proposal, but to create a climate so that a political resolution can be accepted by all sides," papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters Tuesday in Amman.
http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500183321-500243282-501215640-0,00.html

Mitch Battros
Producer - Earth Changes TV
http://www.earthchangesTV.com