June 2, 2014
Pope Francis has done it again, and as usual done it on the world stage. Last Sunday in Jerusalem, he urged the president of Palestine and the President of Israel to join him on June 6 at the Vatican in his apartment for prayer for peace. Francis said peace “must resolutely be pursued, even if each side has to make certain sacrifices.” The pope’s gesture can be seen by politicians as only that, a gesture, but the gesture focuses the world’s attention on an important reality – the need for peace between Palestine and Israel. The New York Times noted: “More broadly, Pope Francis’ actions on Sunday posed a striking example of how, barely a year into his papacy, he is seeking to reassert the Vatican’s ancient role as an arbiter of international diplomacy.”
One of the Pope’s titles is Pontifex Maximus. Basically that translates into: “the great bridge builder” And that is exactly what the Pope is doing here –trying to build a bridge between Palestine and Israel that will bring about peace for all the people living in that part of the world who have been at war with each other in modern times since 1948 when Israel declared that they were an independent state.”
Will the pope’s outreach through prayer make much of a difference to a very difficult situation between the State of Palestine and the State of Israel? Only God knows. But the pope’s desire to bring about peace, and his willingness to put himself and the diplomacy of the Vatican at the disposal of governments who have failed to come to a peace agreement with each other despite the best diplomatic efforts of much larger governments (the United States, for example) is much more than a gesture. The pope’s initiative offers the two states a valuable opportunity to come together, pray together and talk peace.
Some will surely say that the pope has no business getting involved in politics. To that I would only urge that among the many roles that the pope takes on as the “servant of the servants of God” is to assist in any way he can to bring peace to our world. We sometimes forget that the pope is a head of state as well as the person leading the estimated 1.2 billion Catholics around the world. He has enormous recognition and admiration around the world. In this case Pope Francis is not unlike St. Francis, who went to see Suleiman the Magnificent to urge him to bring peace to the many lands he had conquered and to create a world in which Christians and Muslims could live together in peace.
No one knows what the day of prayer between two enemy leaders and a Pope will bring, but it is clear that the eyes of the world will be turned to the Vatican, even as the world celebrates the invasion of Europe by the Allies during World War II. June 6, 2014 is the 70th anniversary of D-Day. D-Day has often been referred to as the beginning of the end of World War II. What a gift to the world if June 6, 2014 became the day on which the world would recognize that the beginning of the end of the war between Palestine and Israel started in Vatican City at the invitation of Pope Francis.