Holy Land pilgrimage confirmed

Pope Francis has put an end to weeks of speculation and confirmed that his trip to the Holy Land will take place from 24-26 May, writes Robert Mickens.

He said the three-day visit to Amman (Jordan), Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be a “pilgrimage of prayer” with important ecumenical overtones. “The main purpose is to commemorate the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and [Ecumenical] Patriarch Athenagoras, which took place on 5 January, exactly 50 years ago,” the Pope told tens of thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Sunday Angelus.

“At the Holy Sepulchre we will celebrate an ecumenical meeting with all the representatives of the Christian Churches of Jerusalem together with Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople,” he said.

Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires, a friend of the Pope who also co-authored a book with him, is expected to be part of the papal visit. “Beginning right now I ask you to pray for this pilgrimage,” Francis said. Then, in what appeared to be an answer to Israeli criticism that his visit to Bethlehem would give political advantage to the Palestinian leaders, he underlined in unscripted comments that the Holy Land trip “will be a pilgrimage of prayer”.

Vatican planners are still working out the exact details of the visit with local officials in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Pope Francis is expected to celebrate Masses in Amman and Bethlehem, but not in Jerusalem, where the ecumenical service will take place instead. He is expected to meet political and civic leaders, go to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and may meet with Syrian refugees in Amman.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the personal secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has said he does not expect a “revolution” under Pope Francis as the Pope wants to “reform the faithful and not the faith”, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

In an exclusive interview on Bavarian television on New Year’s Day he said in matters of doctrine, there was “absolute continuity” between Pope Francis and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. Lumen Fidei, Francis’ first encyclical that was written mainly by Benedict XVI, was “excellent proof” of this, he said. But the two Popes were “completely different” in the way they approached people and in the priorities they set. Whereas Benedict’s main priorities had been “faith and reason, along with the problem of relativism”, Francis chiefly concentrated on “the option for the poor”, Archbishop Gänswein said.