The Papal Visit

By Nesreen | April 17th, 2008 | No Comments

In DC, we’re used to having a fair number of news story that circulate the globe each day originate here, even while most of us go about our lives detached from those events.

Today was a bit different on account of the Papal visit. Pope Benedict XVI made us all stop and look and ponder. Even if we didn’t see the Pope up close, even if we were just watching on our TVs, just as people in Nebraska and California were, we cared. Even those of us who aren’t Catholic were interested. The Pope is a big deal to be sure.

With each image I saw, I was brought back to spring of the year 2000. That was when Pope John Paul II was in the Holy Land at the same time I was. It was early March, so the chill of the Mediterranean winter still sank into my bones. Pope John Paul II held a huge outdoor Mass at the Sea of Galilee. I was staying near the West Bank city of Ramallah, where buses were transporting those attending the massive outdoor Mass. Some of my distant cousins were going, and there was some expectation that I might attend too. The trip was several hours north, and the buses leaving in the early morning hours would be crowded, chaotic, and cold. Security would mean interminable delays for Palestinians traveling to Israel-proper for the day. I stayed behind, knowing I had the option to see the Pope at the end of the week, as he passed via his Pope Mobile from the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem’s Old City.

This privilege, my ability to go from the West Bank to East Jerusalem, was not one afforded to my relatives. Though it is only a 30 minute ride from where I was, permits and the nature of the military occupation made their passage unlikely, if not impossible. So on the day of the Papal Mass at the Holy Sepulchre, I went it alone. The cabbie let me off at the Old City’s Damascus Gate entrance. Right away I noticed something amiss. OK, I thought, where are the throngs?

Passing the clothes and cassette merchants outside the front doors, I went in, meandering pass the vegetable sellers, smelling thyme and coriander along the way. At a left turn I met the souvenir sellers amply supplied with as many olive bead rosaries and crosses as Israeli flags and skull caps. I maneuvered easily, a bit too easily. OK, it was Sunday, the Israeli Monday, but where are the throngs?, I still wondered.

When I reached just outside the Christian Quarter, I noticed the locked gate first. The Sunday service was meant to be an intimate experience for the Pope, a quiet and reflective way to end his Holy Jubilee to the Holy Land. The Mass at the Holy Sepulcher was exclusive, not open as the Mass near the Galilee–where an estimated 100,000 where in attendance–was. Nonetheless, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw as I approached the locked gate: less than half a dozen people. The Pope had come to the Old City, to the Holy Land, and as far as I can tell, most people didn’t care.

It was a ridiculous thought, of course. The Pope had been attending Masses, Interfaith Dialogue Meetings and the like all week. Public events brought impressive numbers of attendees. Israel even opened its border with Lebanon to let Christians and UN Peace Keepers attend the Galilee Mass.

Yet here I was at the end of the Pope’s visit, on his very last day in the Holy Land, and I had about 12 people to share it with. Not to disparage my company, but it made me sad. I had missed the throngs and the throngs were missing this: likely the last possible glimpse of Pope John Paul II in Jerusalem. He was 79 when he visited and indeed, already infirm at the time of his trip, he never was to return.

I don’t know why the turnout was so low on that late March day. At the time, the only thing I could think was that everyone was tired, the way they had grown tired of their animosity for one another, of the peace processes that never work, of the road blocks that kept them from humanizing one another. People were just tired because it was the first workday week in Israel and the whole week prior had been a flutter of Papal activity. You see, people who live in the Holy Land are just people, and they know attrition as much as you think you might, but only more so.

…When Pope Benedict XVI toured DC today, his Pope Mobile on the bed of a pick-up truck, there were throngs. People who didn’t attend mass lined streets of his expected route. People who didn’t show up on the expected route watched their televisions.

I didn’t see Pope Benedict XVI today except by TV. But as with all things evocative, when I saw Pope Benedict, I saw much, much more. I saw Pope John Paul II today, seated frail and hunched yet exuding power, inside his Pope Mobile that was specially made for the rough cobbled roads and narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City.