On the third day of his visit to Syria yesterday, Pope John Paul urged Arabs and Jews to be merciful and forgiving seekers of peace, even while news came through of further violence.
While visiting the Golan Heights, one of the Middle East's most bitterly contested areas, he included in his prayers a four-month-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip yesterday.
"Mindful of the sad news of conflict and death which even today arrived from Gaza, our prayer becomes even more intense," he said.
He visited the ghost town of Quneitra and, with Israeli military positions visible in the distance, he quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God," he said, while resting on a kneeler in a ruined Greek Orthodox Church.
The church was destroyed by withdrawing Israeli forces in 1974, as was the rest of the town. They had captured it seven years earlier. Syria has left it untouched, as a memorial to what it calls Israeli atrocities.
Quneitra once had a population of about 50,000. Now just a few families live here, some making a living providing food and other services for UN peacekeepers who patrol the frontier dividing the Golan. The Syrian government bussed in thousands of former Quneitra residents for yesterday's visit.
A narrow wooden catwalk was built so Pope John Paul could negotiate his way over broken paving and through the rubble of bulldozed houses, hospitals, churches, and mosques.
"From this place, so disfigured by war, I wish to raise my voice in prayer for peace in the Holy Land and the world," he said.
"Genuine peace is a gift from God. Our openness to that gift requires a conversion of heart and a conscience obedient to His law."
A 13-year-old girl, Lin Doughouz, told him that Quneitra was once known as "the flower of the Golan". That was before "the enemy destroyed its houses so savagely".
The Pope told representatives of the UN observer force there: "Your presence is a sign of the international community's determination to be of assistance in bringing closer the day of harmony between the peoples, the cultures, and religions of the area." The UN commander gave him a cross made of pieces of exploded shell.
Among the thousands of local people who came to meet him as he arrived in a black Mercedes were many who had been displaced from their original homes by the Israeli occupation of the Golan.
They included members of the local Druze Muslim population, in traditional dress. They sang songs of peace, accompanied by hand-clapping, and waved olive branches outside the gutted church, one of the few buildings still standing in the town.
On the other side of the border, about 200 Druze demonstrated in the occupied Golan while the Pope prayed. Some waved banners welcoming him while others waved Syrian and Iraqi flags, chanting anti-Israeli slogans.
Last night Pope John Paul was greeted by thousands of young people when he visited a cathedral of the Greek Melchite rite in Damascus. In his speech he urged them to keep Gospel values in their lives and promote good relations between all Christians in Syria. War and peace in the region have been central themes of his pilgrimage to Syria, in the footsteps of St Paul.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday saluted his visit to the "Muslim land of Syria" and said it would "contribute to a better understanding between Christians and Muslims".
Mr Hamid-Reza Asefi said at a Tehran press conference that since President Mohammad Khatami had been elected in 1997, the Islamic republic of Iran had been promoting "the idea of dialogue between cultures, religions and civilisations".
Pope John Paul is to leave Syria for his second visit to Malta in 11 years this afternoon. There he will beatify three Maltese Venerables at a Mass tomorrow morning.
Those being beatified are a Maltese priest, Father George Preca, a Benedictine nun, Sister Maria Adeodata Pisani, and Nazju Falzon, who instructed British servicemen in the Catholic faith.