Word: pontiffs
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There may be other trips too for this traveling man, who in 91 journeys abroad as Pontiff has already logged more miles than all previous Popes combined. John Paul hopes to overcome snags with Saddam Hussein's government and venture to Ur, in southern Iraq, birthplace of Abraham. He wants to go to Damascus and visit the site of St. Paul's conversion. And he would like to go to Russia, but not without an invitation from the Russian Orthodox Church--which is not likely to be offered. This Pope, who has made much progress in Catholic-Jewish relations...
...knelt and prayed in the adjoining Grotto of the Wise Men, where the child Jesus lay in the manger. Then the Pope stood and asked for a chair. This part was clearly not scripted. A couple of Franciscan priests scurried upstairs to get John Paul what he wanted. The Pontiff then waved everybody off, sat and prayed the Divine Office that priests are supposed to recite every day. The Pope remained alone for some 15 minutes before heading back to the steps. And then from a tiny grotto of peace, he climbed back into the middle of a political battleground...
...states, policies and causes. Moreover, he heads an entity with its own foreign policy goals: from a desire to protect the religious sites and fast-vanishing Christians of the Holy Land, to long-held support of a Palestinian homeland, to the recent rapprochement with Israel--goals that the Pontiff could not alter simply to wow an audience. The strictly spiritual stops on the trip were interspersed with so many loaded encounters, shifting on an almost hourly basis--If this is Thursday it must be...Barak? Holocaust survivors? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem?--that the Pope seemed like an FBI trainee...
...next celebrated Mass in Manger Square where, by prior negotiation, the muezzin of the mosque next door shortened his call to midday prayers so as not to disrupt the Pope too much. Still, the Pontiff seemed a bit startled when, smack between his homily and the rest of the service, the amplified Allahu Akbar (God is great) rang out. He then enjoyed his brief respite in the grotto before accompanying Arafat, who sometimes held his hand, to the nearby Deheisha refugee camp...
...tears streaming down her face as that strapping young priest--now the frail, elderly Pontiff--laid his hand gently on her arm. After meeting Zierer and five other survivors in the memorial's Hall of Remembrance, John Paul opened his heart. Recalling "friends and neighbors" who perished, he said, "Men, women and children cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to heed their cry?" He continued, "I assure the Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love and by no political considerations...