Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday visited Muslim and Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City, part of an effort to better the sometimes strained relations among three faiths that share a common origin. Emphasizing Jerusalem's role as a "city of peace" for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Benedict prayed at the Western Wall and met Muslim leaders at the Dome of the Rock, the site from where, according to the Koran describes, the prophet Mohammed began his trip to heaven.
The same area, the site of ancient Israel's First and Second Temples, also is considered holy to Jews.
"In a world sadly torn by divisions, this sacred place serves as a stimulus, and also challenges men and women of goodwill to work to overcome misunderstandings and conflicts of the past and set out on the path of a sincere dialogue aimed at building a world of justice and peace for coming generations," the pope said during a meeting with the top Islamic cleric in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein.
Competing claims to the hilltop compound has led to violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the past, and resolving the dispute has been among the most intractable issues during years of peace negotiations.
Benedict slipped off his red shoes before entering the mosque at the Dome of the Rock, in accordance with Muslim practice. At the Western Wall, just beyond the Dome complex, he followed Jewish tradition and placed a note into one of the ancient crevices.
"I bring before you the joys, the hopes and the aspirations, the trials, the suffering and the pain of all your people throughout the world," the note read, according to a copy released to reporters.
"God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hear the cry of the afflicted, the fearful, the bereft; send your peace upon this Holy Land."
The pontiff will later lead a Mass in the ancient Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem.
Designed as personal pilgrimage, Benedict's five days in Israel have already rubbed hard against the region's complexities. His remarks on Monday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial were criticized by some Jewish leaders as too generic, given his history as a member of the German Army and some of his recent decisions as pope.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, drew rebukes for their own actions. Palestinians said Israel was wrong to close an East Jerusalem press center set up for the papal visit and had not granted permission to enough Catholics from the Gaza Strip to attend papal events, while a Muslim cleric was faulted for an unauthorized diatribe against Israel during what was supposed to be a positive, plaudit-filled interfaith event.
At the Yad Vashem memorial, Benedict said the memory of those massacred during World War II serves as "a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence."
"They lost their lives, but they will never lose their names. These are indelibly etched in the hearts of their loved ones, their surviving fellow prisoners and all those determined never to allow such an atrocity to disgrace mankind again," Benedict said.
As a young man in Bavaria during World War II, Benedict served in a Nazi youth group and later the German army -- virtually unavoidable given the situation in Germany at the time, but part of a biography that makes him a rarity at one of the Jewish state's central institutions.
He pledged that the Catholic Church is "committed to praying and working tirelessly to ensure that hatred will never reign in the hearts of men again."
Benedict spoke from the memorial's Hall of Remembrance, a stone room lit by a perpetual flame and inscribed with the names of the major camps where Jews and other minorities were put to death. It includes the entombed ashes of Holocaust victims.
Dressed in white robes, he laid a wreath of yellow and white flowers on the stone slab covering the ashes, paused briefly with hands clasped, and bowed. During a ceremony that included the writings of a Jewish poet killed while fighting in the war, the pope also met briefly with six Holocaust survivors.
Call for a Palestinian State
Benedict urged Israel and the Palestinians Monday to settle their differences "so that people can live in security in a homeland of their own, with internationally recognized borders."
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was in attendance when the pope made his remarks, has expressed skepticism over the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, as called for by the United States.
Other high-profile Germans with similar wartime backgrounds have visited Yad Vashem, a sprawling complex on a Jerusalem hilltop that includes an extensive museum and research facility.
In 1995, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who also was in a Nazi youth group, made an official visit during which he referred to the "deep shame" Germany felt over the organized extermination of millions.
But Benedict's arrival at the memorial tapped even deeper issues at the core of relations between Catholics and Jews.
Benedict's decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson, is one point of contention. He also reauthorized use of a Latin prayer that asked for Jews to be "delivered from their darkness" and accept the divinity of Jesus.
While the language eventually was toned down, the prayer still hearkened back to age-old tensions between the two faiths.
Yad Vashem director Avner Shalev said he considered Benedict's remarks a "serious and important" acknowledgment of what the Holocaust represents, but said he also found the language "a bit restrained."
He and other officials at the memorial said they were expecting a more personal expression of empathy, rather than the general remarks Benedict delivered. "Maybe our expectations were too high," Shalev said.
Benedict's comments at the memorial and at other points during his trip have emphasized the universality of faith. In Jordan he spoke of the "inseparable bond" between Judaism and Christianity.
Stubborn Complexities
While Benedict preached cooperation and dialogue, however, the region's complexities remained stubbornly present. Israeli police closed a Palestinian Authority press center set up in East Jerusalem for the pope's visit; there were complaints from the Gaza Strip that Israel had not issued enough travel permits for members of the small Catholic community to leave the embargoed area to attend papal events; the Islamist Hamas movement criticized Benedict for meeting with the parents of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; and at an interfaith dialogue meeting, Palestinian Sheik Taissir Tamimi delivered a verbal assault on Israel and asked the pope to condemn the Jewish state.
"This intervention was a direct negation of what dialogue should be," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office, said in response. Tamimi, the Palestinian Authority's chief Islamic judge, had not been scheduled to speak at the event.
Benedict's five days in Israel and the occupied West Bank will include efforts to bolster the area's small Christian community, but is being more closely watched for events such as his visit to Yad Vashem and a Wednesday journey to the West Bank.
The Vatican has some of its own complaints on the table. The museum at Yad Vashem -- which Benedict, like his predecessor John Paul II, did not visit -- includes a highly critical portrayal of the wartime pope, Pius XII.
A plaque under his picture says that Pius, among other things, remained silent as Jews were deported from Rome to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Pius is on track to Catholic sainthood, and the Vatican has argued that more was done behind the scenes than the Yad Vashem display indicates.
Vatican and Yad Vashem researchers are working together on the issue.
Yad Vashem has asked that Vatican archives be opened to allow closer examination of Pius's record.
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