Pope John Paul leaves tomorrow for a mission of religious and political peace that will take him from Orthodox Greece to Muslim Syria and Catholic Malta. The Pontiff turns 81 this month.
It will be his first overseas trip of the year and his stop in Syria takes him to the Middle East for the first time since the region's peace process began unravelling.
Speaking at his general audience yesterday, the Pope asked Catholics to pray for the success of the tour which he said was "very significant" to him.
He said he hoped the visit to Greece would help relations with Orthodox Christians.
The official purpose of the tour, his 93rd outside Italy, is to retrace the steps of St Paul, the apostle who converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus and later preached in Athens and Malta on his way to Rome, where he was beheaded.
During his 24-hour stop in Greece, which Vatican sources said was kept intentionally short for security and political reasons, the Pope will enter a religious minefield. After much hand-wringing, the Orthodox Church in Greece agreed to go along with a government invitation for the visit, the first by a pontiff since the Great Schism of 1054 divided Christianity into Eastern and Western branches.
Orthodox militants have called the Pope everything from "a two-horned heretic" to "a devil in disguise".
In Syria, the Pope will call for peace from the Golan Heights city of Quneitra, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and returned under a US-negotiated agreement in 1974. Israeli troops still occupy the western Golan.
Another highlight of the Pope's visit to Damascus will be a stop in the splendid Umayyad Mosque.
After four days in Syria, the Pope ends his trip in predominantly Catholic Malta, presiding at a beatification ceremony for three Maltese citizens.