Pope Benedict plans to speak publicly at least 29 times during his May 8-15 trip to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Apart from covering the main points in our news reports, we also plan to post excerpts from his speeches in a FathWorld series called “Papa dixit” (”the pope said”).

(Photo: Pope Benedict leaves Rome for Amman, 8 May 2009/Max Rossi)

Following are comments from the first day, on the plane and in Amman. The pope spoke Italian on the plane but will deliver all his speeches here in English.

COMMENTS ON THE PLANE (Reuters translation from Italian):

MIDEAST PEACE: “Certainly I will try to make a contribution to peace, not as an individual but in the name of the Catholic Church , of the Holy See. We are not a political power but a spiritual force and this spiritual force is a reality which can contribute to progress in the peace process … As believers we are convinced that that prayer is a real force, it opens the world to God. We are convinced that God listens and can affect history and I think that if millions of believers pray it really is a force that has influence and can make a contribution to moving ahead with peace.”

CATHOLICS AND JEWS: He said It was natural that after 2,000 years of separate histories, misunderstandings would develop between Christians and Jews. “We each have to do everything possible to learn each other’s language … I am convinced that we will make progress and this will help peace and reciprocal love.”

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH-MUSLIM DIALOGUE: “Certainly there is a common message. Despite the differences in our origins we have common roots …. Our faith in one God . it is important to have two-way dialogue, with Jews and with Islam but a trilateral dialogue … a trilateral dialogue must move forward. It is very important for peace and also to allow each person to live his or her faith well.”

(Photo: Benedict aboard the plane to Amman, 8 May 2009/Tony Gentile)

CHRISTIANS LEAVING THE MIDDLE EAST: “This is a difficult moment but is also a moment hope and of a new beginning . We want above all to encourage all the Christians of the Middle East and the holy land to stay, to contribute in their own way. These are the countries of their origins. They are an important component of the culture and life of this region”

ARRIVAL SPEECH IN AMMAN:

NATURE OF VISIT: “I come to Jordan as a pilgrim, to venerate holy places that have played such an important part in some of the key events of Biblical history.”

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN THE MIDDLE EAST: “The opportunity that Jordan’s Catholic community enjoys to build public places of worship is a sign of this country’s respect for religion, and on their behalf I want to say how much this openness is appreciated. Religious freedom is, of course, a fundamental human right, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world.”

ISLAM: “My visit to Jordan gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by His Majesty the King in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam. Now that some years have passed since the publication of the Amman Message and the Amman Interfaith Message, we can say that these worthy initiatives have achieved much good in furthering an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world, confounding the predictions of those who consider violence and conflict inevitable. Indeed the Kingdom of Jordan has long been at the forefront of initiatives to promote peace in the Middle East and throughout the world, encouraging inter-religious dialogue, supporting efforts to find a just solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, welcoming refugees from neighboring Iraq, and seeking to curb extremism.

(Photo: Pope greets Muslim sheikh as King Abdullah looks on, 8 May 2009//Ali Jarekji)

“At the Seminar held in Rome last autumn by the Catholic-Muslim Forum, the participants examined the central role played in our respective religious traditions by the commandment of love. I hope very much that this visit, and indeed all the initiatives designed to foster good relations between Christians and Muslims, will help us to grow in love for the Almighty and Merciful God, and in fraternal love for one another.”

AT THE REGINA PACIS CENTRE FOR THE DISABLED IN AMMAN:

HIS PILGRIMAGE: “Like countless pilgrims before me it is now my turn to satisfy that profound wish to touch, to draw solace from and to venerate the places where Jesus lived, the places which were made holy by his presence… Dear friends, every one of us is a pilgrim… Friends, unlike the pilgrims of old, I do not come bearing gifts or offerings. I come simply with an intention, a hope: to pray for the precious gift of unity and peace, most specifically for the Middle East. Peace for individuals, for parents and children, for communities, peace for Jerusalem, for the Holy Land, for the region, peace for the entire human family; the lasting peace born of justice, integrity and compassion, the peace that arises from humility, forgiveness and the profound desire to live in harmony as one.”

PRAYER: “Prayer is hope in action. And in fact true reason is contained in prayer: we come into loving contact with the one God, the universal Creator, and in so doing we come to realize the futility of human divisions and prejudices and we sense the wondrous possibilities that open up before us when our hearts are converted to God’s truth, to his design for each of us and our world.”

(Photo: Pope and king at arrival, 8 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

“Dear young friends … Your experience of trials, your witness to compassion, and your determination to overcome the obstacles you encounter, encourage me in the belief that suffering can bring about change for the good. In our own trials, and standing alongside others in their struggles, we glimpse the essence of our humanity, we become, as it were, more human. And we come to learn that, on another plane, even hearts hardened by cynicism or injustice or unwillingness to forgive are never beyond the reach of God, can always be opened to a new way of being, a vision of peace. I exhort you all to pray every day for our world.”

The Holy Land is scrambling in its preparations for the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI, pouring millions of dollars into infrastructure and security. It comes just nine years after his predecessor, John Paul II, made his historical visit. He will be travelling from May 8-15.

More than 1 million Christian pilgrims passed through Israel last year, and the tourism ministry is preparing for a spike in that number around the time of the pope’s visit. The pontiff will travel with heavy security, sometimes on new roads built specifically for him.

You can scroll down and read about the key stops, in chronological order, on his whirlwind tour.

Pope Benedict will begin his trip with a few days in Jordan. He is expected to give a speech at the ancient basilica on Mount Nebo that overlooks the Jordan River and Jerusalem. Mount Nebo is believed to be where the Prophet Moses died.

The pope will also hold a mass at the Amman International Stadium

Yad Vashem — One of the pope’s first stops in Israel will be at the Jewish state’s memorial to victims of the Nazi Holocaust. It is particularly significant because of the controversy surrounding his decision to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denies the Holocaust. Pope Benedict later admitted the Vatican mishandled the affair. He will meet Jewish Holocaust survivors and attend a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, a common stop among visiting dignitaries. He will also plant a tree in a nearby forest.

Inside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, the area dubbed the “holy basin” is packed with sites, often overlapping, holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Besides being a political flashpoint, it is a destination for millions of tourists each year. The pope will make a number of stops in the Old City.

Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif — Known by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (the noble sanctuary), this spot has often been at the centre of conflict. Built on the site of an ancient Jewish temple, two domed structures stand there today, one an Islamic monument and the other a mosque. The pope will meet with the Grand Mufti, who is in charge of Islamic holy places in Jerusalem.

Western Wall — Also known as the Wailing Wall, it is a perimeter wall of the Jewish temple razed by the Romans in 70 AD and one of the holiest sites in Judaism. It is common for visitors to place notes in the wall. The pope will meet the rabbi of the Western Wall.

Coenaculum of the last supper — A second storey room off a narrow alley just outside the Old City walls where tradition says Jesus held the last supper. The hall was built by Crusaders in the 12th century. You can still see ancient graffiti on its walls from visitors throughout the centuries. Jewish tradition says the floor below is the burial site of King David. The pope will hold a small prayer session.

Valley of Josaphat — Believed by many Christians to be the valley where the Last Judgment is to take place, the pope will hold a mass there. It is located near the Old City.

The pope will visit the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where work is being done to renovate roads and buildings for his arrival.

Manger Square and Church of the Nativity — The pope will hold a mass in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity. He will then visit the grotto in the church where Christians believe the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ.

While in Bethlehem, the pope will also visit the Caritas Baby Hospital and deliver a speech in the Aida Palestinian refugee camp.

The pope will visit Nazareth, the largest Arab city in northern Israel and believed to be the boyhood home of Jesus, escorted by about nine helicopters and 2,000 clergy. Israel has invested at least $3 million dollars in the city alone in preparation.

Mount Precipice — The highlight of the trip will be a mass at a huge amphitheatre built into the hill where Christian tradition says an angry mob tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. Some 40,000 people are expected to attend. The mount overlooks the Jezreel Valley, a fertile area that has been used a battlefield for thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to Napoleon.

Church of the Annunciation — The traditional Roman Catholic site where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. The first shrine on site was likely built in the middle of the 4th century. The pope will enter the grotto of the church and afterward lead prayers and give a speech in the second story of the basilica.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre — On the final day of his trip, the pope will tour the Jerusalem church which is traditionally revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and tomb. The mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine identified the place of the crucifixion and first built the shrine around AD 330. The church is maintained by six Christian denominations and fights between the groups are not uncommon. Details are not yet finalised, but the pope is expected to enter the tomb and hold a ceremony outside.

Our Jerusalem bureau has sent a very interesting report about criticism within the Israeli army of the Gaza offensive in January. What caught my eye was that it brings up the issue of a religious war, a term usually used in relation to Muslims.

(Photo: Israeli air strike near Gaza-Egypt border in southern Gaza Strip, 26 Feb 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

The story starts off as follows:

Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January’s Gaza offensive that they were fighting a “religious war” against gentiles, according to one army commander’s account published on Friday.

“Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,” he said.

The account by Ram, a pseudonym to shield the soldier’s identity, was published by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper on the second day of revelations about the Gaza offensive that have rocked the Israeli military. (www.haaretz.com “Shooting and Crying, 2009″)…

The officer felt there was a “huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out”.

The corps distributed pamphlets about the history of Israel’s fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present, he said.  But the rabbinate’s message imparted to many soldiers the sense that “this operation was a religious war”.

Read the whole article here.

It’s hard to know when to use terms like “religious war” for violence such as what we’ve seen in the Middle East, Northern Ireland or Afghanistan. The opposing sides in these conflicts have different religious labels, so there is — at least superficially — a religious angle there. But there is also an underlying political struggle which often plays a far bigger role than those labels. Northern Ireland, for example, is not about religion but has often been presented mostly as a struggle between Catholics and Protestants. By contrast, the unrest in Sri Lanka pits secessionist Tamils (Hindus) against majority Sinhalese (Buddhists), but nobody calls that a religious war. Some seem to evolve — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken on more religious overtones over time while the Taliban are now seen more as insurgents than the Koran students their name signals.

What do you think? When is a conflict a religious war and when is it more a political struggle going on behind those labels? Or is it impossible to disentangle the two?

Here is our video report on the story and the script (including translations).

The uproar over traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson and his denial of the Holocaust highlights an open secret here in Rome: Vatican departments don’t talk to each much, or at least as much as they should. The pope appears to have decided to lift the 1988 excommunication of four schismatic bishops of the SSPX (including Williamson) without the wide consultation that it may have merited. The Christian Unity department, which also oversees relations with Jews, was apparently kept out of the loop. The head of the office, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told The New York Times it was the pope’s decision. Kasper’s office and the Vatican press office, headed by Father Federico Lombardi, were clearly not prepared for the media onslaught that followed the discovery of Williamson’s views denying the Holocaust.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

Pope Benedict’s lifting of the ban and Williamson’s comments about the Holocaust are unrelated as far as Church law is concerned. The excommunications lifted last Saturday were imposed because the four were ordained without Vatican permission. As Father Thomas Resse, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, told me: “The Holocaust is a matter of history, not faith. Being a Holocaust denier is stupid but not against the faith. Being anti-Semitic, however, is a sin.” This is an important distinction, but not one the Vatican seems to be able to get across.

It was all very reminiscent of the pope’s Regensburg speech in 2006. Few in the Vatican knew it was coming. The Vatican was overwhelmed by the Muslim reaction and the media interest. This time, it is also not clear how many people in the Vatican even knew about Williamson’s history. Surely, those negotiating with the traditionalists for the lifting of the excommunications should  have known. If they didn’t, why didn’t they? If they did, why did they not tell Kasper’s department? The Holocaust is such a sensitive issue for Jews that this response could have been seen from miles away.

(Photo: Pope Benedict speaks at Regensburg University, 21 Sept 2006/KNA)

Even if the Vatican felt the rapprochement with the traditionalists was necessary, a clear and severe distancing from Williamson’s views issued simultaneously to the announcement of the lifting of the excommunications certainly would not have hurt.

It is still too early to gauge the public relations fallout within the Jewish community and in the Church itself. In all the years I have been covering Catholic-Jewish relations, this is the biggest blow-up I can recall — bigger than the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the Good Friday prayer,  the controversy over Pius XII or the late Pope John Paul receiving Arafat.  It will take a long time for this one to heal. Those involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue say it will go on. It will.

In 2003, several Reuters correspondents — including myself — published a book entitled “Pope John Paul, Reaching Out Across Borders.” One contributor, Alan Elsner, is Jewish and lost relatives in the Belzec death camp in Poland in 1942. He concluded his chapter on Catholic relations with Jews with this paragraph:

“For the Jews, the central question to be put to Christians remains, in the words of Rabbi Michael Signer ‘Can we trust you, can we trust you now?’ For Pope John Paul, the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. It will be for his successor to provide an answer for the future.”

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), is on schedule to say the Muslim prayer at an inaugural prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral on Wednesday. There has been no change of plan. The Obama inauguration team has not withdrawn its invitation.

(Photo: Ingrid Mattson, 16 Oct 2008/Sohail Nakhooda)

That might come as a surprise to readers who read several news items and blogs in recent days with headlines like “Obama prayer leader from group US linked to Hamas.” or “Questionable Connections for Speaker at High-Profile Inaugural Event?” The report started on a blog called American Thinker on Saturday and has been picked up repeatedly since then.

Charges of supporting Hamas, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist organisation, would seem like just the thing to get anyone disinvited from the prayer service pronto. But they would have to be proven. These articles only mentioned alleged “links” that seem flimsier the more they’re examined.

“This is brought up over and over again,” Mattson said by cellphone as she prepared to travel to Washington from Hartford, where she is professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary. The “links” line refers  to the fact that ISNA was among about 300 individuals and Muslim groups listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case against the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted last November of channeling money to Hamas. That case was so messy that it resulted in a mistrial in 2007 before the prosecution won on its second try.

ISNA and Mattson have publicly denounced Hamas and repeatedly denied supporting them. They are trying to get the organisation’s name off that list. But since ISNA was only an unindicted co-conspirator, it could not hear what evidence the government claimed to have against them or defend itself in court. “If they had any real evidence, they would have indicted people,” Mattson said. “We have never had any links with Hamas.”

(Photo: Washington National Cathedral, 11 June 2004/Hyungwon Kang)

Did the Obama inaugural team know this? It’s hard to imagine they didn’t — Mattson already participated in a prayer service at the Democratic convention in Denver last August.

“They know who we are,” Mattson said. “We’ve been in touch with them. They have a good understanding of how smear campaigns work. They’ve received statements of support for us from other people in the wake of these stories, including from Jewish groups.”

Cardinal Renato Martino, the papal aide who angered Israel and Jews by comparing Gaza to a “big concentration camp” is no novice at being outspoken or controversial. The southern Italian cardinal speaks his mind, loves to talk and sometimes has had to pay the price. Martino, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (effectively its justice minister), has a laundry list of people and governments with whom he has clashed. But that hasn’t stopped him.

(Photo: Cardinal Martino at the Vatican, 12 April 2005/Tony Gentile)

Perhaps his most famous remark came in December, 2003 when, shortly after U.S. troops captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Martino told a news conference at the Vatican that U.S. military were wrong to show video footage of Saddam. “I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures,” he said at the time.

The “treated like a cow” remark was heard around the world and, needless to say, was not very appreciated in the White House. The Vatican had opposed the U.S.-invasion of Iraq in March of that year. In fact, a certain chill developed between Martino and then U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran who later went on to become Bush’s Secretary for Veteran Affairs.

While that is the Martino quip everyone remembers, there has been no lack of others.

In 2005, ahead of a meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations summit in Scotland, he pointedly said the United States had to “open its eyes” about the problems of Africa. He angered anti-immigration parties in Italy by backing a proposal to allow Muslim pupils in Italy to study the Koran in state schools. He angered U.S. conservatives, including well-known television commentators, when he said Washington’s plan to build a fence on the U.S.-Mexican border was part of an “inhuman programme.”

(Photo: Cardinal Martino visits AIDS patient in Abidjan, 19 May 2007/Luc Gnago)

The former Vatican diplomat, who was the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in New York from 1986 to 2002, made headlines again last year when he called on Catholics to withdraw support their financial support for Amnesty International over the group’s call to decriminalise abortion.

Martino had more of a free rein during the papacy of Pope John Paul, who was not shy himself about speaking out. But Vatican sources have said Pope Benedict wants his cardinals to keep a lower profile and that Martino had been told by Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to keep the lid on and not be so controversial.

The cardinal obviously disregarded the advice when he gave his interview with the Gaza=concentration camp comparison to the Italian on-line newspaper Ilsussidiario.net. His comment only added to the speculation Israel’s military operation in Gaza is putting Benedict’s tentatively planned trip to the Holy Land in May in serious doubt. While both the Vatican and Israel have officially said the trip is still on, diplomats are not so sure.

(Photo: Israeli weapons explode over Gaza, 9 Jan 2008/Suhaib Salem)

What do you think of Martino’s concentration camp comment and his outspokenness in general? Do you think the pope should go ahead with his planned Holy Land visit despite events in Gaza?

(Editor’s note: Doug Hamilton, one of our most experienced correspondents and lively writers, recently took up a new post in Jerusalem. Here’s the back story to his latest feature “A Biblical view of peace high in the Holy Land.”)

(Photo:the West Bank Jewish settlement of Psagot, 17 November 2008/Eliana Aponte)

When I began my assignment to Israel & the Palestinian Territories two months ago, I was determined to get out and about and see as much as possible for myself. I wanted to find out up close what life was like for the people who live here — from the Palestinians lining up obediently to get through intimidating Israeli checkpoints, to the nightlife crowd a world away in chic Tel Aviv, to the Orthodox Jews in 16th century attire in their Jerusalem districts where you dare not drive on the Sabbath, to the Palestinian olive groves and to the settlers on the occupied land of the West Bank.

I bought a GPS navigator to help me get around and the first thing I discovered was that my desired West Bank and Gaza destinations were “in an unreachable area”, according to the device. The occupied territories show up as dark grey background on the GPS. But its warnings can be overridden and  it will then guide you  pretty accurately to the “unreachable destinations” you seek.

As the little green arrow that designates your car moves along corridors through the dark grey background, isolated splodges of beige show up on the map. These are Israeli settlements, mostly on the hilltops. You look up from the highway and see new roads going up the slopes leading to new houses with red-tiled roofs. They are protected by steel gates and coils of razor wire and electric alarm fences, or set behind Israel’s formidable security barrier of concrete and watchtowers. The further out you go from Jerusalem, the more there is a frontier feeling to these strangely suburban-looking little communities, surrounded by rocky terraced hillsides that have barely changed down the centuries.

A settler group recently organised a visit for foreign media to correct what they view as our misperceptions about their movement. The people I met on this little tour — which provided the material for my feature — betrayed not a flicker of self-doubt. They had a few sharp answers ready for any challenge to their fundamental premise: God gave this land to the Jews and nothing over the 3,500 years since the Old Testament — the book they live by — has changed or can change that fact. The settlers we met were all friendly and polite. I have also witnessed young settler activists in less genteel circumstances, calling for the killing of young Palestinians who throw rocks at police guarding security-barrier constructions and demanding the displacement of Palestinian villagers in the way of their project to make the occupation of what they call Judea and Samaria a permanent fact.

OK, it happened a few days ago, but I still can’t get over that “Christian” fist fight at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem between the Greek Orthodox and Armenians. Our photo desk has put together a slide show of Ammar Awad’s shots from the scene — click here to see it.

Loving thy neighbour is not always easy, especially, it seems, when it comes to the traditional site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

Christian factions have squabbled for years over who controls which parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s divided Old City.

Sometimes they even come to blows.

Priests and worshippers at an Orthodox Palm Sunday celebration on April 20 ended up brawling after Armenian clerics apparently kicked a Greek Orthodox priest out of a shrine at the church — one of Christianity’s holiest.

Police weren’t sure what sparked the fist-fight, but friction between the sects has been simmering for centuries. A Muslim keeps the key, and about 150 years ago, theTurks elaborately carved up territory in the church between the feuding Christian factions.

Police are braced for another punch-up when the eastern churches celebrate Easter on April 27 with the centuries-old “Miracle of the Holy Fire” ceremony.

Orthodox Christians believe the Holy Spirit miraculously lights candles when the Greek patriarch enters the shrine meant to mark Jesus’s tomb alone. The Armenians think their leader should be allowed in too.

I recently interviewed the director of a new Israeli documentary film called “Holy Fire”, which explores the religious fervour that grips Jerusalem’s Old City, revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Yoram Sabo, a secular Jew, said he was initially befuddled by the priestly quarelling at the Holy Sepulchre. But after three years of following the story’s twists and turns he came to understand that conflict was almost inevitable in a place endowed with such meaning for so many.

“It may seem trivial,” he said. “But you have to look at it through religious glasses — people fight for what they think is important.”

Italians have a wonderful phrase they use when things don’t work out as they had hoped: “It was better when it was worse.”

That was the thrust of controversial comments about the Catholic Church’s relations with Israel by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, currently the Vatican’s nuncio (ambassador) to the United States and formerly the papal envoy to the Jewish state.

Sambi, who was nuncio in Israel from 1998-2005, could not have been clearer about his discontent: “If I must be frank, relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations.” That was the opening salvo in a long interview in Italian with www. terrasanta.net, an on-line publication of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

After decades of work, Israel and the Vatican reached a fundamental accord in 1993 and established full diplomatic relations, the next year. But even when the long-awaited historic ties were forged, complex legal and financial issues about the status of the Catholic Church and its properties in Israel were left hanging on a promise and a prayer to sort them out as soon as possible afterwards.

Sambi indicated that the Vatican should have looked harder before it leaped: “The Holy See decided to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as an act of trust, leaving to promises the commitments to later on regularise concrete aspects of the life of the Catholic communities and the Church (in Israel).“

Juridical questions were ironed out in a 1997 agreement but work on financial and tax questions as well as issues of visas for foreign priests are still dragging on.

In words that were unusually blunt for a diplomat, Sambi said: “You can’t buy trust at the marketplace, it has to be consolidated with respect for accords that have been signed and fidelity to to one’s word.” In another section of the interview he lamented postponements of meetings by the Israeli delegation, the delegation’s lack of power to negotiate and what he called an absence of political will in Israel.

The whopper was perhaps this one: “The kind of trust one can place in Israel’s promises is there for everyone to see!“

Perhaps Sambi was so unguarded in venting his frustrations because the interview was given to what is a rather internal publication of the Franciscans. Perhaps he never expected it to spill over into the mainstream media.

But it was noticed.

The Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben-Hur, told Catholic News Service he was surprised by the comments, “especially coming from our good friend, Archbishop Sambi.“

The Vatican put out a statement (here in Italian ) saying Sambi’s words reflected his “thought and personal experience” and that the Holy See hoped for a “rapid conclusion to the important negotiations already in progress.” While some saw this as the Vatican distancing itself from Sambi, a more careful reading would perhaps be that the Vatican fully supported and appreciated what Sambi had said and done. After all, few Vatican diplomats have more personal experience in relations with Israel than Sambi.

The delegations are next due to meet December 12-13. Diplomats here are wondering whether Sambi spoke so bluntly on purpose, to push things forward. Do you think relations will be helped or hindered by these comments?