Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Sunday that Pope Benedict XVI will visit the Holy Land in May in the first official confirmation of the trip. "In May there will be an important visit, that of Pope Benedict XVI," the premier said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
"President Shimon Peres will accompany him during his visit and the prime minister's office has been charged with organising the trip," Olmert said.
News reports said the visit would take place from May 8 to 14 and include stops in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem as well as the Jordanian capital Amman.
The visit had been cast in doubt over comments made by Richard Williamson, an ultra-conservative English bishop who has denied that Jews died in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust in World War II.
On Thursday the German-born pontiff told leaders of the Conference of American Jewish Organisations that he was still planning to visit Israel despite the Williamson controversy, but did not specify a date.
Benedict told the delegation he was "preparing to visit Israel, a land which is holy for Christians as well as Jews, since the roots of our faith are to be found there."
The pope has come under harsh criticism since January 24 when he lifted the excommunication of Williamson and three other members of a breakaway fraternity that rejected the Vatican reforms of the early 1960s.
They rejected a declaration, Nostra Aetate, which ended a Church doctrine under which the Jews were held responsible for killing Jesus Christ.
Last week the Vatican called on Williamson to retract his negationist statements about the Holocaust, which he has so far refused to do.
Three days before the excommunication was lifted, Swedish television aired an interview with Williamson recorded last November in which he repeated his denial of the existence of Nazi gas chambers.
His comments sparked a torrent of outrage, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel leading political condemnation of the pope's move.
Williamson told the German weekly Der Spiegel last week that he would reexamine the historical evidence of the Nazi gas chambers, but made no indication that he had changed his views.
On Thursday, Benedict recalled Pope John Paul II's 2000 visit to Jerusalem, saying: "If there is one particular image which encapsulates this commitment, it is the moment when (he) stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, pleading for God's forgiveness after all the injustice that the Jewish people have had to suffer."
Saying he wanted to make that prayer "my own," the pope quoted his predecessor's words: "We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused (Jews) to suffer, and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant."
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(Source: YRCN)