"Israel, Palestinians united in praise of Pope," Ha'aretz reports:

...At the age of 79 and already ailing, the Pope embarked on a grueling seven-day pilgrimage to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan in March 2000 that took him to the very roots of the Roman Catholic faith...

For Israelis, two images stand out: the Pope's pilgrimage to Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and his prayer at Jerusalem's Western Wall for forgiveness for historic Christian mistreatment of Jews.

"I would describe him as a great hero of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation," said Rabbi David Rosen, who was part of the Israeli team that negotiated the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Jewish state in 1993...

Jewish leaders had long praised the Polish Pope's repeated condemnation of anti-Semitism as a sin against God and man and his description of Jews as the Church's "dearly beloved elder brothers".

"He was the first Pope to apologize to the Jews," said an official in Israel's Chief Rabbinate. "In the past 10 years, ties have warmed and there is a tight connection between the Rabbinate of Israel and the Vatican."

During the Pope's reign, the Vatican and Israel exchanged ambassadors for the first time, marking a historical change in the Holy See's attitude towards the Jewish state...

A testament to the idea Pope John Paul II fiercely advocated, that each individual life is sacred, and that individuals can make a difference. RIP.

Sunday Update: Juan Cole lays out some reasons why the pope was a sometimes inconvenient ally for the right, and the left. A reader D writes, "Never forget he beatified the founder of Opus Dei and gave Bishop Romero the cold shoulder. The CHURCH gets to decide the value of the individual life, as far as this Pope was concerned. There is no inherent value in your own individual life. Romero's mistake was to think that each one of those poor downtrodden folks he tried to desperately to help had the right to feel valuable -- silly Romero. The Church is not about liberation; it's about vassalage." The writer of this letter published in the Washington Post Sunday, a former refugee from Ethiopia, explains why he considers the Pope a personal hero.

Posted by Laura at April 2, 2005 08:13 PM