Catholic World News News Feature

'Spin Control' for the Pope's trip to the Holy Land May 07, 2009

Expectations are high, as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to leave Rome on Friday for a week-long trip to the Middle East. But tensions are high as well, both at the Vatican and in the Holy Land. The Pope will be visiting the world's most volatile region, working his way through the diplomatic equivalent of a mine field; he will have very little margin for error.

Pope Benedict himself has tried to downplay the political dimensions of his trip, emphasizing instead that he will visit the Holy Land as a pilgrim and speak to its people as a spiritual leader. At his weekly public audience on May 6 he remarked: "My primary intention is to visit the places made holy by the life of Jesus, and, to pray at them for the gift of peace and unity for your families, and all those for whom the Holy Land and the Middle East is home."

But in the Holy Land, religion and politics are so closely entwined that it is not easy to speak about faith without causing political reverberations. Every word the Pontiff utters and every gesture he makes will be closely scrutinized for political implications-- often by analysts who have their own partisan interests to promote.

To complicate matters still further, the Holy Father is already the target of political criticism, in the most recent instance, because of his insistence that condoms are not the best means of curbing the AIDS epidemic. Many analysts in the secular-- and, sad to say, many within the Church-- are primed and ready to explode in indignation against any papal statement with which they disagree. Pope Benedict cannot expect to receive the benefit of the doubt, nor even the benefit of a fair public hearing.

So when news reports from the papal trip began to hit the headlines, discerning readers should treat them with care, mindful that many different groups have incentives to "spin" the stories. For instance:

• The Israeli government naturally wants the Pope's visit to put its policies in a favorable light. That might not be easy, since the newly installed government has taken a hard-line policy on negotiations with the Palestinians, moving briskly away from the two-state solution that the Vatican has backed. Also, the Israeli government may want to divert attention away from the long-running negotiations with the Holy See to finalize a juridical agreement-- negotiations that failed to produce a pact in time for the papal visit.
• The Palestinian Authority has been quite openly maneuvering to use the Pope's visit as an occasion to dramatize the suffering of the Palestinian people. Organizers of a papal visit to a refugee camp outside Bethlehem hoped that the Pope would deliver a speech in the imposing shadow of the huge concrete "security wall" that girds the camp; after heated discussions, another site for the speech has been chosen. Pope Benedict undoubtedly will voice support for dispossessed Palestinians; whether he will satisfy their political leaders is another question. Palestinian leaders in Gaza are disappointed that the Pontiff will not travel there, but in light of the extreme political tensions in Gaza and the distinct possibility of violence, the decision to omit that region from the papal itinerary is understandable.
• Jewish leaders are still smarting over the Pope's move toward reconciliation with a bishop who questioned the Holocaust, and may be quick to take umbrage at any papal statement that emphasizes the unique role of the Church in the economy of salvation. Especially when he visits the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, the Holy Father will be challenged to express his utter condemnation of the Nazi genocide in terms that are clear, unequivocal, and convincing-- and yet do not contribute to the slanderous accusations that the Vatican, and particularly Pope Pius XII, was sympathetic toward the Nazi regime at the time.
• Many Islamic leaders, too, have been suspicious of Pope Benedict since the furor over his Regensburg address. Militant Muslins are likely to see the Roman Pontiff as a representative of the Crusader spirit, a threat to the purity of their faith. There will undoubtedly be public denunciations of the Pope by radical imams, and efforts to link him with Israel and the US as enemies of Islam. (The notion that Vatican policies are in accord with those of Israel and Washington is politically far-fetched, but nevertheless carries great emotional appeal among fervent Islamists.)
• Palestinian Christians, a small minority caught between competing powers, must be acutely aware of the repercussions they would suffer from any political controversy during the Pope's visit. As the Latin-rite Catholic Patriarch Fouad Twal put it-- perhaps inelegantly, but quite realistically: "At the end of the visit the Pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences."
• Finally, dissident Catholics are likely to make themselves heard once again, using any available opportunity to undermine the authority of the Pope.

Without doubt, the Pope is embarking on a delicate diplomatic mission. Faithful Catholics should pray for his success, and prudent readers should approach the next week's news headlines with care.