Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will join Pope Francis at the Vatican on June 8 to pray together for peace, the Vatican announced today.
The Pope invited the two leaders to hold the prayer meeting during his trip to Israel last week; the goal, the Pontiff told reporters on his plane back, is not to engage in an Israeli-Palestinian mediation but to create an atmosphere that would foster the resumption of peace talks, according to Reuters.
American-led peace talks foundered in April after Abbas announced a unity pact with Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that rules in Gaza.