By Ofira Koopmans May 15, 2009, 12:33 GMT
Jerusalem - Pope Benedict XVI ended his landmark and at times highly emotional and politically charged pilgrimage to the Holy Land Friday by issuing a powerful call for peace.
'Allow me to make this appeal to all the people of these lands: No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war!' he told a farewell ceremony at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport Friday.
In the most strongly-worded statement of his five-day stay, he said Israel's right to exist should be 'universally recognized, and reiterated the Palestinians' right to a sovereign, independent state.
The pontiff also made a clear bid to compensate for what critics had dismissed as bland and lukewarm remarks at Yad Vashem, describing his visit to the Israeli Holocaust memorial as 'deeply moving' and as 'one of the most solemn moments of my stay in Israel
His encounter with Holocaust survivors had 'brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews ... were brutally exterminated under a godless regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred.'
But he also called Israel's controversial West Bank wall 'one of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands.' Adopting both of the Israeli and Palestinian positions regarding the barrier, he called it an instrument of 'security and separation.'
Benedict used his last day in Jerusalem to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most central religious shrine in Christianity, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified and resurrected.
Clergymen stood in a half circle outside, singing solemn hymns, as the pontiff kneeled down to pray - alone - at what Christians believe is the empty tomb of Jesus in the Grotto, a small space within the basilica.
Emerging after several minutes, he then kneeled also at the Stone of Unction, where Jesus' body was believed prepared for burial.
'The empty tomb (of Jesus) speaks to us of hope,' said the pontiff.
'This is the message that I wish to leave with you today, at the conclusion of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land.'
Of his five-day tour of Israel and the Palestinian areas, perhaps the most emotional aspect for Jews was his visit to Yad Vashem. Some Israeli survivors of the Nazi-attempted genocide of Europe's Jews had criticized his remarks there, calling them disappointing.
One of the most politically charged visits, for its part, was that made to the Aida refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, a sensative, highly symbolic location for the Pope's expression of support for an independent Palestinian state.
The largest religious event for Christians came Thursday, when he celebrated mass with at least 30,000 foreign Catholic pilgrims as well as local Arab-Israeli Christians, on a hill overlooking Nazareth.
Papal Spokesman Federico Lombardi summed up the trip, only the third by a reigning Pope to the Holy Land, as 'very positive,' even if its second leg to Israel and the Palestinian areas had been 'more complex maybe' than the first three days in Jordan.
He said the Pope came away with a 'much more profound knowledge' of the problems in the area, contributed to 'dialogue and understanding,' and served as 'a certain bridge' by listening to both sides.
'At the same time he has had the occasion to give a very unified message: peace, peace and peace,' he said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials too expressed satisfaction, with Deputy Palestinian Tourism Minister Marwan Toubasi saying 'it has achieved everything the Palestinians were hoping to get,' so much so, he claimed, that it had been a disappointment for the Israelis.
But bidding the Pope farewell at the airport, he called the visit a 'significant contribution' to the new relations between the Vatican and Israel,' as well as a 'profound demonstration of the enduring dialogue between the Jewish people and the hundreds of millions of Christian believers throughout the world.'
As the spiritual leaders of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics, Benedict's statements made throughout the journey, said Peres, whose duties as president are largely ceremonial, carried a 'substantive weight.'
Ignoring the criticism, Peres noted 'in particular you declaration that the Holocaust, the Shoah, must not be forgotten nor denied' and that anti-Semitism must be fought intensively.
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