Pope pitches peace to Israelis, Palestinians
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis urged the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to “break the spiral of hatred and violence” in an unprecedented prayer meeting at the Vatican Sunday night that he hoped would mark “a new journey” toward peace in the Middle East.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, and Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, embraced warmly and shared a joke before the Jewish, Christian and Muslim prayers in the Vatican gardens, where the leaders planted an olive tree.
The Pope said too many children had been killed by war and said the two leaders “must respond” to their people’s “yearning for the dawn of peace” in the Middle East. He called on them to find “the strength to persevere undaunted in dialogue” after the breakdown of talks in April.
“It is my hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of a new journey where we seek things that unite, so as to overcome the things that divide,” he said in a short address to the gathering.
“Peacemaking calls for courage, much more than warfare — the courage to say ‘yes’ to encounter and ‘no’ to conflict, ‘yes’ to dialogue and ‘no’ to violence.”
The ceremony ended with the three leaders’ individual invocations for peace. It was the first time the two presidents had met publicly in more than a year, and the first time that Jewish, Christian and Islamic prayers were said together in such a way at the Vatican.
Peres described the Pope as a “bridge builder” who had touched peoples’ hearts regardless of their faith or nationality during his visit to the Holy Land in May. He said Israelis and Palestinians were “aching for peace.”
“Peace does not come easy,” Peres said. “We are yet achieve this. We must pursue it and bring it closer.”
Abbas thanked the Pope “from the bottom of my heart” for proposing the ceremony and called for a “comprehensive and just peace” with Israel. “O Lord, bring comprehensive and just peace to our country and region so that our people and the peoples of the Middle East and the whole world would enjoy the fruit of peace, stability and coexistence,” he said.
Vatican officials insisted the Pope had no political agenda in inviting the two leaders to pray at his home, other than to rekindle a desire for peace. But the meeting could have greater symbolic significance, given that he was able to bring them together so soon after peace talks failed and at a time when Israel has been trying to isolate Abbas.
Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a church official in charge of Catholic sites in the Holy Land and a key organizer of the encounter, cautioned: “No one is presumptuous enough to think peace will break out on Monday.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, did not attend the ceremony and Peres, now 90, is due to leave office when his term expires next month. Netanyahu has urged the world to shun Abbas’s new unity government, which took office last week, because it is backed by the Islamic militant group Hamas. His pleas have been ignored by the West, with both the United States and the European Union saying they will give the unity government a chance.
Netanyahu made no specific comments about the ceremony, but in remarks Saturday at a paramilitary police base in Jerusalem, he suggested that prayer was no substitute for security.
The latest round of Israelipeace talks broke down in late April, with both sides blaming each other.