tackles rifts with Middle East ‘pilgrimage of prayer’

VATICAN CITY (AFP) 9 May by Ella Ide, Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere — Pope Francis makes his first trip to the Middle East this month accompanied by Jewish and Muslim intellectuals to push for inter-religious dialogue amid stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, who has garnered a reputation as a reformer as well as defender of the downtrodden since his election last year, has referred to his journey as a “pilgrimage of prayer.” Francis’s trip from Amman to Bethlehem and Jerusalem from May 24 to 26 will aim to reach beyond the walls of Catholicism and mark the 50th anniversary of a historic rapprochement between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds. Inan unprecedented move, Francis will be accompanied throughout by Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic studies professor Omar Abboud — old friends of the Argentine pope from when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires. “Every gesture and word will be scrupulously analysed,” Andrea Tornielli, a biographer of the pontiff, wrote on the Italian website Vatican Insider. “This is precisely why the pilgrimage of a pope who named himself after the saint of peace and has chosen two representatives of the Jewish and Muslim faiths as travel companions, can help renew dialogue,” he said. Security for the crowd-loving pope will be high after a series of hate crimes against the Catholic Church and Muslims in Israel, and the Vatican hopes the visit will draw attention to the plight of