Pope Arrives to Mend Fences in the Middle East

JERUSALEM, May 8, 2009 — -- The pope mobile has been spotted out and about in Jerusalem, dress rehearsing for a papal Mass near the garden of Gethsemane. Organizers have been putting up flags and cleaning up the Old City walls in preparation for Pope Benedict's arrival this weekend.

Jordan is the first stop today, then followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories -- a complex landscape of political and religious differences of opinion, to put it mildly. Many are calling the papal visit a tight-rope walk. He has said he is coming as a "pilgrim of peace."

Jordan will be the pope's first Arab visit, and his second visit to a predominantly Muslim nation. It is billed as a chance to improve relations between the Catholic Church and Islam; there's still a need for damage control after Benedict's controversial 2006 speech in Regensberg, Germany, where he quoted a historical figure with negative things to say about the prophet Mohammed.

The Vatican tried to limit the damage but some, including Jordan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, are demanding a more explicit apology. The pope's speeches and meetings with Islamic clerics and scholars will be a chance to mend fences, if he gets it right, or to prolong the mistrust, if he gets it wrong.

So, too, are his meetings with rabbis in Israel. Relations with Judaism and Israel haven't always been great of late. The pope has put a lot of effort into smoothing relations but there are some major problems.

Pope Benedict will visit Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum Monday afternoon in one of the most important and potentially sensitive visits on his busy schedule.

The relationship between the Catholic church and the Jewish people, in the particular context of the Holocaust, is fraught with difficulties.

The pope didn't help matters earlier this year when he reversed a ban on a British bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust denier. Few believe the pope intended any offence but it was widely seen as a clumsy and avoidable mistake.