Holy Land a challenge as pope reaches out to others while supporting
beleaguered flock

AP Worldstream
May 01, 2005

STEVEN GUTKIN

Palestinian Christians have a particularly large cross to bear _ cut
off from land, restricted in movement, exposed to violence and often
unable to visit the sacred sites where Jesus once walked.

Can a new pope in Rome help ease their burden? Possibly, some faithful
say, but only if he can persuade people to begin seeing Christians in
the Middle East as a vulnerable minority.

The Holy Land _ revered as home to the ancient Jewish temples,
birthplace of Christ, site of Muhammad’s ascension to heaven _ is an
important testing ground for Benedict XVI’s stated goal of improving
ties between faiths.

Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, made great strides in that area,
but his focus on Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim relations
during an historic 2000 visit to the Holy Land left many local
Catholics feeling slighted.

Now many are wondering whether Benedict, who comes to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Nazi-related baggage, can do any
better at bolstering his beleaguered Catholic flock, who comprise just
over 1 percent of the population in Israel and the Palestinian
territories and whose numbers are dwindling.

“The Christians are in a precarious situation throughout the Middle
East,” said Daniel Rossing, director of the Jerusalem Center for
Jewish-Christian relations.

“Rather than perceiving them as in a very precarious position as a
minority there’s a tendency to simply see them as a part of the vast
dominant Christian world.”

Some of the 250,000 Christians living between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea, half of whom belong to various Catholic
denominations, say they are victims of both Israeli discrimination and
Muslim antipathy, though Christians point out that they have coexisted
with other religions for centuries.

“It’s not easy being Christian here,” says George Nassar, a
44-year-old Catholic bookseller in Jerusalem. “But as the old pope and
the new pope have told us, we don’t have to be afraid.”

Most agree that the best solution to the plight of Palestinian
Christians would be an end to the conflict with Israel that causes
most of their hardships.

That’s the work of the two sides, not the pope, but the 78-year-old
Benedict, a German who belonged to the Hitler Youth as a teenager, may
find himself with even less influence in the Mideast conflict than his
predecessor had.

Some Palestinians fear German guilt over the Holocaust could keep
Benedict from taking the Jewish state to task even when he
should. They wonder whether he’ll continue John Paul ll’s opposition
to Israel’s West Bank separation barrier that cut off many Bethlehem
Christians from their farmland, for instance, or whether he’ll oppose
Israeli land policies in Nazareth that restrict non-Jewish ownership,
causing housing shortages for Christians.

They wonder if Benedict can help slow the Christian emigration from
the Holy Land, where a lack of law and order in the Palestinian
territories has left his flock especially vulnerable.

Religion is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict, says Father
Shawki Baterian, Chancellor of the Catholic Church’s Latin
Patriarchate in Jerusalem, and “religious leaders have a role to play
to help political leaders find peace.”

Israelis greeted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s election as pope with a
mixture of appreciation for his solid record on Catholic-Jewish
dialogue and apprehension about his past in Nazi Germany.

Membership in Hitler Youth was compulsory when Benedict was a
youngster, but that didn’t stop the mass circulation Yediot Ahronot
from running these headlines upon his election: “White smoke, black
past” and “From the Nazi youth movement to the Vatican.”

Other Israelis, however, welcomed Benedict’s papacy, noting his
intimate involvement in John Paul’s historic decisions to apologize
for the Church’s past anti-Semitism and forge diplomatic relations
between Israel and the Vatican.

“We are sure that under his papacy we will continue to see a
strengthening relationship between Israel and the Vatican and between
the Jewish people and the church,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman
Mark Regev.

Palestinians, too, congratulated the new pope but urged him to enforce
the official Vatican position that Jerusalem be a city open to all.

Four years of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed has resulted in most
Muslims and Christians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip not being
allowed to visit the holy city.

Adnan Husseini, a top Muslim leader, denounced what he called Israeli
attempts to Judaize Jerusalem by taking over Muslim and Christian
property and making non-Jews feel unwelcome.

“What’s going on here in the city of peace and the city of religion is
something that is against all religion,” said Husseini, director of
the Islamic Trust, or Waqf. “The pope should care about this because
this is the Holy Land.”

Religious tensions in the Holy Land always simmer and often boil over.

Aside from the well-known enmity between Israeli Jews and Palestinian
Muslims, clashes periodically erupt between other groups, including
recent violence between Druse and Christians in an upper Galilee
village that left nine people injured.

A dispute has broken out between the Armenian and Greek Orthodox
churches over who will perform key rituals during this Saturday’s
“holy fire” ceremony at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.

Palestinians have demanded the removal of the leader of the Greek
Orthodox church in the Holy Land after accusing him of betraying their
cause by leasing key church land in Jerusalem’s Old City to Israeli
Jews. Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irineos I has hotly denied the charges.

Christians and Muslims in Nazareth are engaged in a heated dispute
over Muslims’ attempts to build a mosque next to one of Christendom’s
holiest sites, the Church of the Annunciation.

The Vatican, which holds many assets in the Holy Land, has long taken
a keen interest here. That’s not expected to change under Benedict,
who in recent days has called the Jewish people his “brothers and
sisters” and assured Muslims he wanted to continue “building bridges
of friendship.”

Father Baterian of the Latin Patriarchate says “it will be helpful to
us” if Benedict works to promote dialogue, peace and justice, but
added that no pope can wipe out centuries-old tensions.

“We have a bigger cross in the Holy Land,” he said. “So we should not
promise our people a good life here. Our life in the Holy Land will be
like this.”