Pope’s mosque visit crosses new territory
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 6, 2001
Herald news services
DAMASCUS, Syria – Removing his shoes and donning white cloth slippers out of respect for Islamic tradition, John Paul II on Sunday became the first pope to enter a mosque, calling for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims and stepping across a sensitive line in his campaign for better relations among different faiths.
Vatican and Syrian flags decorated the Omayyad Mosque in the old walled city at the heart of modern Damascus as the 80-year-old pontiff entered the mosque.
Leaning on a cane, he stumbled slightly at the threshold. He walked with Syria’s top Muslim cleric, Sheik Ahmad Kuftaro, who is 86 and also walked with a cane.
“I never imagined that we would meet again in one of our mosques,” Kuftaro said. “This is an occasion that goes beyond history and will begin the process of putting peace to work in the world.”
The pope told him simply, “For me too it is a very important day. I am very happy.”
The pope is on a six-day pilgrimage to Greece, Syria and Malta to retrace the steps of the Apostle Paul, who converted to Christianity on his way to Damascus.
The mosque visit was also a natural step in John Paul’s longtime campaign to heal the wounds separating Christians, Muslims and Jews. In 1986, he became the first pope to visit a Jewish synagogue.
As the pope and the cleric made their way to the center of the mosque, Muslim clerics pressed prayer beads in the pontiff’s hands.
The pope was too frail to glance upward at the vaulted ceiling towering high above. But his entourage looked in awe as they surveyed the cavernous interior with its rows of white marble columns and ornate mosaics in gold, turquoise and azure blue.
The pope was briefed on the history of the mosque as he shuffled slowly toward the reputed tomb of St. John the Baptist, revered by Muslims as the prophet Yahya, tripping momentarily on the soft multicolored layer of carpets that smother the vast floor space.
When he reached the vault, the pope leaned against the gold-inscribed marble structure encasing the tomb and meditated silently.
Afterward, the pope sat and listened silently to speeches that mixed hopeful calls of religious understanding with the fierce rhetoric of war that rules the Middle East. Kuftaro urged the pope to “take a more active stand than mere prayer, supplication and good will.” He asked his guest to “put pressure on Israel by every means to curb its atrocious aggression.”
Muhammad Ziadah, Syria’s minister of religious affairs, used even stronger language that echoed the speech. Ziadah said, “We must be fully aware of what the enemies of God and malicious Zionism conspire to commit against Christianity and Islam.”
The pope, in his response to Ziadah, disagreed. “It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding,” he said, “so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence.”
After leaving the mosque, the pontiff urged Muslims and Christians to “turn to one another with feelings of brotherhood and friendship, so that the Almighty may bless us with the peace which heaven alone can give.”
Today, the pope plans to deliver a prayer for peace at Kuneitra, a city on the Golan Heights that was captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and destroyed just before the area was returned under a 1974 agreement.
Syria has left it ruined as a museum of Israeli aggression. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the papal spokesman, described the site as “a fitting place to pray for peace.”
