Pope Francis will visit Israel on May 25-26, a visit which will mark an important milestone in the deepening relationship between the Catholic Church, Israel and the Jewish people.
The pontiff will arrive Sunday afternoon at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. From there he will directly travel to Jerusalem by helicopter.
Pope Francis announced his pilgrimage to the Holy Land on January 5, 2014 by saying: "The main purpose of this pilgrimage of prayer is to commemorate the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, which took place on 5 January, exactly 50 years ago today."
He will be the fourth Pope to come to the Holy Land.
During his visit on Monday, Pope Francis will pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, lay a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, the movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, and visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, meet with the Chief Rabbinate asd well as with Israeli Preisdent Shimon Peres and hold a private meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the rector of the Latin American rabbinic seminary in Buenos Aires, has stressed the significance of the visit to Herzl’s grave.
Skorka has been invited, together with Imam Omar Abboud, a leader of Argentina’s Muslim community, to join the pope during the trip, said that Francis’s visit to Herzl’s grave could be understood as a nod to Zionism.
“That is a meaningful act,” he said. “He understands the importance of the land of Israel and the state of Israel to the Jewish people.”
He said the two last popes who visited Israel — John Paul II in 2000 and Benedict XVI in 2009 — did not visit Herzl’s grave.
The first pope to visit, Paul VI in 1964, steadfastly refused to acknowledge that he was even in Israel.
‘’The pope is coming to send a message of peace and interfaith understanding,’’ Skorka said, adding that the fact that he asked a rabbi and an imam to join him underlined his conviction that unity and peace can be achieved. ‘
Francis’s close ties to the Jews of Argentina are fairly well known.
Before being elected pope Francis was known as cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Monday afternoon, Pope Francis will visit Yad Vashem in the presence of Israel’s esident Shimon Peres, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Similar to the visit of his predecessors Pope John Paul II in 2000, and Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, the Pope’s visit will take place in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, where he will participate in a memorial ceremony, deliver an address, and greet six Holocaust survivors.
The pope will rekindle the Eternal Flame in memory of the six million of Jews exterminated by the Nazis during WWII, and lay a wreath.
He will also deliver an address, in Italian, and sign the Yad Vashem Guest Book
The chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev will present the Pope with a replica of the painting Prayer, created by Abraham (Abramek) Koplowicz in the Lodz ghetto.
Abramek was murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 14.