Pope John Paul II left Greece to make a historic trip to Syria yesterday, where he gave an impassioned plea for Middle East peace and planned to visit a mosque.
On the second leg of his six-day peace pilgrimage to extend warmth to non-Catholics, the 80-year-old pontiff was greeted with loud cheers as he stepped out of his plane at Damascus airport.
The Pope – who shook hands with Syrian President Bashar Assad and blessed a mound of Syrian soil – is retracing the journey of St. Paul the Apostle.
He’ll become the first pope ever to visit a Muslim house of worship.
The Pope told the crowd at the airport that he hoped “fear [in the Middle East] will turn into trust and contempt to mutual esteem, that force will give way to dialogue, and that a genuine desire to serve the common good will prevail.”
But Assad made pointed criticisms of Israel – making comparisons to Jewish attacks on early Christians thousands of years ago.
“They tried to kill the principals of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”
The pope responded by reading from a prepared text that urged peace.
“It is time to return to the principles of international legality – the banning of acquisition of territory by force, the right of peoples to self-determination, respect for the resolutions of United Nations and the Geneva convention,” the pope said. With Post Wire Services