JERUSALEM // Pope Francis called for Christians, Jews and Muslims to work together for peace as he toured holy sites in Jerusalem on Monday, the final day of his Middle East pilgrimage.
On an early-morning tour of key sacred places in the walled Old City, the 77-year-old pontiff first visited the Al Aqsa mosque compound, then prayed at the Western Wall that lies just beneath it.
The pontiff was rounding off a whirlwind trip that saw him issue a unique invitation to the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to pray with him at the Vatican to end their “increasingly unacceptable” conflict, as well as snatching a personal prayer moment at Israel’s controversial separation barrier.
Francis had promised the three-day pilgrimage, which began on Saturday in Jordan, would steer clear of political issues.
But he ad-libbed from his scripted speech to condemn anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and those behind conflicts in the Middle East.
“May we work together for justice and peace,” Francis said after being shown around the Al Aqsa compound, which is also considered sacred by Jews because it was the site where their two famed Jerusalem temples once stood.
Entering the exquisite blue-tiled Dome of the Rock with its landmark golden cupola, used as a place of worship for women only, the pope first removed his shoes before walking down to visit the smaller, silver-domed Al Aqsa mosque.
For Jews, the plaza is the holiest site in Judaism but they are forbidden by law to pray there, praying instead at the adjacent Western Wall, where the pope made his next stop.
Placing his right hand on the ancient stones, he bowed his head in prayer for a few minutes before placing a note in the wall, then sharing an emotional embrace with two close Jewish and Muslim friends travelling with him.
Later in the morning, he will visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum where he will speak with survivors, and will become the first pope ever to lay flowers on the grave of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.
At the end of the day, he will also celebrate mass at the site known as the Cenacle, or Upper Room, bringing into sharp focus a decades-long debate over prayer rites at the site where Christians believe Jesus had his Last Supper.
The site on Mount Zion is located in a two-storey building also considered holy to Muslims and Jews, who regard it as the place where the biblical figure David was buried.
Thousands of cheering, flag-waving Christians welcomed the pope to Bethlehem on Sunday, where he celebrated mass in Manger Square.
He also made an unscheduled stop by the West Bank barrier, climbing out of his open jeep to pray, his forehead and hand resting against the wall, in a powerful show of support for Palestinians.
A message scrawled on the eight-metre-high concrete barrier said: “Pope we need someone to speak about justice.”
Israel says the barrier, which it began building in 2002, is crucial for security. Palestinians see it as a land grab aimed at stealing territory they want for a future state.
At the end of the open-air mass, the pope weighed in on the Middle East conflict, inviting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres to join him at the Vatican for a “heartfelt prayer” for peace.
After the latest breakdown in US-led peace talks, Francis called on leaders to show “courage” to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, saying “building peace is difficult, but living without peace is a constant torment.”
A senior Palestinian official confirmed Mr Abbas had accepted and would visit the Vatican on June 6, while Mr Peres’s spokesman said only that the invitation was welcomed.
In a boost for relations between bickering Christians, Francis on Sunday also joined Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I in a historic joint prayer for unity between Rome and Constantinople.
The pair met, embraced and kissed at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre inside the Old City to mark the historic meeting 50 years ago between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras — the first easing of tensions between the churches since the Great Schism of the 11th century.
Francis has said the main reason for his Middle East visit was the meeting with Bartholomew I, and “to pray for peace in that land, which has suffered so much”.
* Agence France-Presse
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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