VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI announced yesterday he will visit Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories in May in a trip that will include Jerusalem’s memorial to Holocaust victims.
The pope’s stop in Israel will be particularly significant because of the continuing controversy over his decision to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.
“I will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to ask the Lord, by visiting the places sanctified by his earthly passage, for the precious gift of unity and peace for the Middle East and for all humanity,” the pope told pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square.
The May 8th-15th trip will be the first by a pope to the Holy Land since Pope John Paul visited in 2000.
It follows the worst crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations in half a century, after Pope Benedict lifted the excommunication of British Bishop Richard Williamson, who said in January that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the six million figure widely accepted by historians.
Williamson also said he did not believe there had been any gas chambers at the concentration camps.
He was one of four ultra-traditionalist bishops whose excommunications were lifted by the pope in an attempt to heal a schism in the church that began when they were ordained in 2008 without papal permission.
On February 12th, the pope, in an attempt to defuse the crisis, told Jewish leaders that “any denial or minimisation of this terrible crime is intolerable”, especially from a clergyman.
While in Jerusalem, the pope will visit the Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, which John Paul visited in 2000. But a visit to Yad Vashem’s nearby museum is not planned.
The museum contains a picture of Pius XII with a caption that some of the wartime pontiff’s supporters have asked to be removed or altered.
The caption says that Pius “abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews” and “maintained his neutral position throughout the war”.
The Vatican has called the caption “objectionable”. – (Reuters)