Pope Benedict made a potent and personal denunciation of the Holocaust today, vowing to Israelis that the brutal extermination of Jews by the "godless" Nazi regime would never be forgotten or denied.
The words may allay disappointment some had voiced over the German-born Pope's remark on the Holocaust earlier in his tour.
Ending a pilgrimage to the Holy Land which he said made "powerful impressions" of hope and sadness, he also appealed strongly for peace between Israelis and Palestinians so each can live in their own state, as trustful neighbours in security.
"One of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands was the wall," he said of the high barrier that Israel erected between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Palestinian town that was the reputed birthplace of Jesus according to Christian belief.
"As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation," the 82-year-old pontiff said at Tel Aviv's airport.
His visit had been awaited with hope in the Middle East, where peace-making efforts have stalled. But earlier this year it was in doubt as relations with Israel plunged over his decision to readmit to the church a bishop who had denied the extent of the Holocaust, one of number of issues to anger Jews.
Israelis hoping for an apology this week said Benedict had missed an opportunity. They were disappointed by what they felt was an impersonal speech he made at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, seeming to condemn Holocaust deniers mechanically.
But in today's speech, taking leave of Israeli president Shimon Peres and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the pontiff said the meeting with Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem was "one of the most solemn moments" of his pilgrimage.
"Those deeply moving encounters brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews - mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends - were brutally exterminated under a godless regime," he said.
The Nazi ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred had written an "appalling chapter of history (that) must never be forgotten or denied", he added, in notably more powerful language than that used in his remarks at the Holocaust Hall of Remembrance.
After that speech, Israel's parliamentary speaker said it was not what Jews wanted to hear from a man who was a teenage conscript in the Hitler Youth and World War II German army.
The Pope once again drove home his political message, calling for a peace that would end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and give the Palestinians their own homeland.
He made the point several times during his five-day stay, aware that Israel's new government has pointedly declined to endorse the "two-state solution" favoured by the West.
While relations between them had been tense at times in their history, the Pope said today, Jews and Christians were "branches of the same olive tree, nourished from the same roots and united in brotherly love".
"I wish to put on record that I came to visit this country as a friend of the Israelis, just as I am a friend of the Palestinian people," he said. "No friend ... can fail to be saddened by the continuing tension between your two peoples."
The appeal came 61 years to the day since Israel became a state, a day known as the Nakba, or disaster, by Palestinians, half of whom fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.
The Pope's appeal to both sides was: "No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war!" It should be "universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders", the pontiff said.
"Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely. Let the two-state solution become a reality, not remain a dream."
Mr Peres told the Pope his visit had made "a significant contribution to the new relations" between the Vatican and Israel, and his speeches "carried a substantive weight".
He singled out "your declaration that the Holocaust, the Shoa, must not be forgotten nor denied. And that anti-Semitism and discrimination ,in any form, and in any place, must be fought intensively."
in the final act of worship of his visit, Pope Benedict preached a message of hope for all mankind at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, where Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified, died, then rose from the dead.
"The empty tomb speaks to us of hope, the hope that does not disappoint because it is the gift of the spirit of life," he said. "Love is stronger than death".
Reuters