Peres and Abbas to meet Pope in Rome for peace prayer

Pope Francis will host a meeting between the Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican next month, after making the unexpected invitation during his three-day pilgrimage to the Middle East.

The meeting on 6 June will ­officially be one of prayer, but there are hopes it could spark a revival of peace talks which were ended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month after President Abbas reached a pact with rival faction Hamas, which runs Gaza.

Speaking after Mass in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, the Pope said that in “the birthplace of the Prince of Peace” he was offering his “home” for the encounter.

Francis repeatedly called for a two-state solution to the conflict during his visit to Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Israel, and called the status quo ­“unacceptable”.

After meeting President Abbas, whom he described as “a man of peace”, the Pope said: “The time has come to put an end to the ­situation, which has become increasingly unacceptable. The time has come for everyone to find the courage … to forge a peace which rests on the acknowledgement by all of the right of two states to exist and to live in peace and security within internationally recognised borders.”

He said a stable peace needed to be based on “justice, on the recognition of the rights of every individual, and on mutual ­security”.

During talks in West Jerusalem on Monday, the Pope also described President Peres as a “peacemaker”. The 90-year-old Israeli president, whose role is largely ceremonial, will step down this summer.

Mr Peres is well acquainted with Mr Abbas, and the two men were on the respective negotiating teams in the run-up to the Oslo Accords which were signed in 1993. Mr Netanyahu currently refuses to negotiate with President Abbas. His official spokesman told The Tablet that it would be “inappropriate” to comment on the planned meeting.

The Pope found himself caught up in Middle Eastern political wrangling on Sunday, when he alarmed Israeli officials by making an unscheduled stop to pray at the security wall which runs through the West Bank.

In response, Mr Netanyahu asked the Pope to make an unplanned stop at the Memorial to the Victims of Terror on Mount Zion on Sunday, after Francis laid a wreath at the tomb of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.