Last week, before
embarking on a three-day visit to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and
Israel, Pope Francis stated that his trip would be "strictly religious."
A key reason for his short sojourn, he said, was to "pray for peace in
this land that has suffered greatly."
After arriving, however, he spent less time engaged in prayer than in politics.
This would have been
completely appropriate had the bishop of Rome and the leader of the
worldwide Catholic Church addressed the religious nature of the Islamist
war being waged against Christians and Jews. It would have befitted the
head of the Holy See to stand at the believed-to-be sites of Jesus'
birth and baptism and bemoan the fate of his flock at the hands of
Muslim fanatics bent on subjugating all "infidels." It would have been
in keeping with his mission to reassure the world's Christians that good
will prevail over evil.
Sadly, this is not how
the pope's pilgrimage to the Holy Land panned out. Though he did mention
the plight of his people when in Amman last Saturday, it was to praise
Jordan's "climate of serene coexistence" between Muslims and Christians.
"I thank the
authorities of the kingdom for all they are doing," he said, while
meeting with King Abdullah II and Queen Rania at their palace. "And I
encourage them to persevere in their efforts to seek lasting peace for
the entire region. This goal urgently requires that a peaceful solution
be found to the crisis in Syria, as well as a just solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
On Sunday, the pontiff went to Bethlehem. There he met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whom he called "a man of peace."
As always, Abbas and
his cronies put their best lies forward, undoubtedly denying Christian
flight in droves from Palestinian-controlled areas on the one hand,
while blaming Israel for the phenomenon on the other.
The remaining tiny
Christian minority in Bethlehem was then treated to a mass delivered by
the pope at Manger Square. But his words were drowned out by the muezzin
of the Omar Mosque calling Muslims to prayer and blasting "Allahu
akbar" (God is great) into a loudspeaker.
For visual effect, a
mural painted in honor of the pope showed the baby Jesus swaddled in a
keffiyeh next to his earthly father, Joseph, whose head was covered in
the style of late Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser
Arafat. This complemented the dozens of posters placed strategically
around the city comparing Palestinian suffering to that of Jesus.
It was all a perfect
lead-in to taking the pontiff to see children in the Dheisheh refugee
camp. You know, those kept in squalor for decades by the PLO and
exploited for international sympathy, fundraising and Israel-bashing
purposes.
On the way, his
motorcade stopped at the separation barrier, erected by Israel to keep
Palestinian suicide bombers at bay. There, against the backdrop of
anti-Israel graffiti using Holocaust imagery, the pope put his head
against the wall and prayed for peace.
He also prayed for
peace at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Monday. As is customary, he
wrote a note and placed it in a crack in the Wall. Ignoring the ancient
ban on reading other people's mail, instituted by Jewish legal scholar
and Talmudist Rabbeinu Gershom, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation
removed the note and released its contents.
As a result, we now
know what Francis penned on official papal stationary -- the Lord's
Prayer in Spanish: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us
this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil."
It is the height of
irony, then, that before returning to Rome, he invited "peacemakers"
Abbas and outgoing Israeli President Shimon Peres to the Vatican "to
pray with [him]." The three-way session is to take place on June 8.
Peres is the epitome of
"forgiving those who trespass against us" before defeating them -- an
attitude that has had dire consequences. And the only peacemaking in
which Abbas has engaged is with Hamas, a terrorist organization that
considers the killing of Jews and Christians a religious imperative.
Praying to God to
"deliver us from evil" is meaningless if we excuse and court it.
Welcoming a perpetrator and his apologist into the Vatican is not only
incomprehensible in this context. It constitutes the Catholic Church's
spiritual, moral and political abandonment of the millions of Christians
living in perpetual fear of their Muslim persecutors.
In a Vatican Radio broadcast on Wednesday, Francis referred to his trip to the Holy Land as a "great grace."
I'm no theologian, but I beg to differ.
Ruthie Blum is the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'"
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