Pope to Travel to Holy Land with Rabbi and Muslim Leader

NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports that Pope Francis’s pilgrimage to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories this week will be more about the future and less about the past than the visits of previous popes. The Argentinean Francis carries less historical baggage than German Benedict XVI or Polish John Paul II, who apologized for the Holocaust and anti-Semitism more broadly during their visits to the Holy Land. The pope’s invitation for two friends of other faiths to accompany him, as well as his recent untraditional break with Western powers with regards to the Syrian Civil War, are part of what Poggioli calls “a new ad hoc diplomacy where the Vatican could play a completely new role on the international stage.”

Read at NPR

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