Personal Trip Carries Weight of Diplomacy

Pope Faces Scrutiny In Visit to Mideast

JERUSALEM, May 8 -- Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Amman on Friday for an eight-day visit to Jordan and Israel that he said should be viewed as a personal pilgrimage.

But as the pontiff makes that journey of individual prayer, touring key Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites, his words and gestures will face intense scrutiny for what they say about Benedict's relationship with other faiths and approach to the region's points of conflict.

His visit "will be interpreted, I am sure, a thousand ways," said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington, who is in Jerusalem for an interfaith meeting separate from the papal visit. "He is not here to play a role in a drama that somebody else has written. In the middle of it all, you have a man who wants to be a pilgrim."

Inevitably, there will be more to the trip than that. It may, for example, bolster morale among the local Christian population. Mostly Arab and divided largely among the Orthodox, Maronite and Roman Catholic churches, that community serves as a historic anchor to the church's roots in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

But the Christian community in Israel and Jordan also continues to shrink in proportion to the faster-growing Muslim and Jewish populations. Over the next week, Benedict is scheduled to celebrate four public Masses, as well as six smaller Masses or prayer services at Catholic religious facilities.

He arrives amid still-strong memories of the late Pope John Paul II's tour of the region in 2000, a journey that included the first visit by a pope to a mosque and was also the first papal visit to Israel after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Jewish state. That trip, which generated headlines around the world, was emblematic of John Paul's success in developing a moral voice that transcended his role as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedict was John Paul's chief enforcer of Catholic doctrine, and their close association helped make Benedict's selection in 2005 one of the quickest in recent Vatican history. But at 82, he is not likely to have the decades in office that John Paul had to establish his standing as a world leader. A professor and theologian for much of his career, with limited experience in pastoral positions, his transition to the global stage has been rocky: After four year as pope, he continues to try to overcome stumbles that have angered both Muslims and Jews.

Most recently, the Vatican's decision to lift the excommunication of British Bishop Richard Williamson led to an outcry among many Jewish leaders because of Williamson's public denial of the Holocaust. While Benedict acknowledged that the Vatican had mishandled the announcement and insisted that Williamson disavow his statements about Nazi death camps, the episode makes the pope's planned visit Monday to the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem all the more poignant.

There is added significance given the Bavarian-born pope's conscription as a teenager into the German army in World War II.

Benedict's history "gives another level of importance to what he says and how he says it," said Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. Living through World War II in his native Poland, John Paul II "had firsthand impressions of what it was like to suffer atrocities," and that came through when he visited Yad Vashem in 2000, Shalev added. "Benedict does not have that memory or point of view."

Admirers say they are certain that Benedict is as serious about improving relations with Muslims, Jews and people of other faiths as was his predecessor. The controversy over Williamson was essentially a "communications fiasco," said Rabbi David Rosen, a member of the executive board of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel who has met with Benedict several times.

Describing the pontiff, as many do, as fundamentally shy, Rosen said Benedict lacks John Paul's natural charisma. But he said the pope has tried to use problems such as the Williamson affair to advance discussion among the faiths.