Israelis and Palestinians Pay Tribute to Pope's Pilgrimage to Holy Land

The Pope's visit to the Holy Land marked a new era in Jewish-Christian relations, according to a senior Israeli politician, while a Palestinian official has described the visit as demonstrating papal support for the right of Palestinians to live in an independent homeland.Haim Ramon, the Israeli cabinet minister who was in charge of the pope's visit, which ended March 26, said that it had permanently altered the relationship between Christians and Jews."I believe that this visit brings to an end the era of conflict, the era of dispute and the era of war between Christianity and Judaism," he said."After 2,000 years [in which] these two great monotheistic religions fought against each other and in the Christian case even discriminated, deported, murdered, tortured - that era is coming to an end and this visit by the Pope to the Holy Land is marking the end to this era of conflict," he said.Some Jewish critics of the Catholic Church said they had been waiting for an apology from the Pope for the behavior of wartime pontiff, Pius XII, who they say remained publicly silent during the Holocaust. But Ramon said Pope John Paul II had made great gestures towards reconciliation with Jews during his six-days in Israel and the Palestinian-controlled territories. The Pope visited Israel's Holocaust memorial and spoke with great sadness about the six million Jews who were murdered during the Second World War. Pope John Paul II also visited the holiest of sites for Jews, the Western Wall of the second temple in Jerusalem. There, he prayed silently and, like many Jews, placed a note to God in a crevice of the wall, which asked for forgiveness for those of all generations who had caused Jews to suffer.Such an act could only be seen as something ...

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