November 4, 2021 Editor

Pope Francis meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embrace during an audience at the Vatican Nov. 4, 2021. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Gerard O’Connell

November 04, 2021

photo above: Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embrace during an audience at the Vatican Nov. 4, 2021. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

WN: Hope!

excerpts:

After Pope Francis and his senior advisors had separate meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the morning of Nov. 4, the Vatican issued a statement insisting that it is “absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue” between Israelis and Palestinians “to achieve a two-state solution.”

The Vatican called on the international community to make a “more vigorous effort” to assist this dialogue between the two peoples.

The Vatican also insisted on the need to ensure that the status of Jerusalem be recognized as “a Holy City for all three Abrahamic religions” and that this be guaranteed “through a special internationally guaranteed status.”

The Vatican issued a statement insisting that it is “absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue” between Israelis and Palestinians “to achieve a two-state solution.”

In 2015, the Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine.

Today, Francis and Mr. Abbas spoke with the aid of an interpreter for 50 minutes in the pope’s private library in the Vatican’s apostolic palace. The length of the audience indicates perhaps that they entered in depth into the present state of the 73-year-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which a former Vatican foreign minister, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, once described as “the mother of all conflicts” in the Middle East.

After their private conversation, Mr. Abbas presented his delegation to the pope, and then the two leaders exchanged gifts.

Francis gave Mr. Abbas a bronze relief plaque depicting two hands holding each other, with the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square in the background, as well as showing a woman with a child and a boat of migrants. The plaque had the Italian inscription, “Let’s fill the hands with other hands.” The pope also gave Mr. Abbas several key documents of his pontificate: the message for the World Day of Peace 2021; the Document on Human Fraternity, which he signed with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Abu Dhabi in 2019; and the book Statio Orbis, which documents his prayer and talk in St. Peter’s Square on March 27, 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy.

The Palestinian president gave the pope a book on the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem and a representation of the grotto of the Nativity.

. . . during Mr. Abbas’s conversations in the Vatican, “attention turned to the urgency of working for peace, avoiding the use of weapons, and combating all forms of extremism and fundamentalism.”

In their discussions, “it was reiterated that Jerusalem must be recognized by all as a place of encounter and not of conflict, and that its status must preserve its identity and universal value as a Holy City for all three Abrahamic religions, also through a special internationally guaranteed status,” according to the Vatican’s statement. This has been a long-standing position of the Vatican, and the tensions and conflicts of recent years around Jerusalem have underlined the need to guarantee this status.

Please click on: Pope Francis and Mahmoud Abbas

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Editor

Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.

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