When what he should have done is called to task Egypt and Jordan for abandoning their own citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, blaming their plight on Israel and trying to foist them off as a fake State and Nationality!
If he had bothered to read factual history, (and we all know the Catholic Church has selective memory about its own history and has actually fabricated a great deal of it) he would have known that the term “Palestinian” was coined by the PLO, Yasser Arafat and the Arab states to give Media Legitimacy to the creation of a false “Palestinian” state and nationality for Jordanians in the West Bank, Egyptians in Gaza to undermine the legitimate state of Israel!
In a pilgrimage to Jesus’s traditional birthplace, Pope Benedict XVI called Wednesday for the establishment of a Palestinian state and acknowledged Palestinian suffering during decades of Middle East turmoil.
The pontiff stood alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as he delivered his strongest public support yet for Palestinian statehood.
“Mr. President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders,” the pontiff said.
Benedict acknowledged the difficulties faced by the Palestinians, although he stopped short of singling out Israel for criticism.
“I know how much you have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of the turmoil that has afflicted this land for decades,” he said.
“It is my earnest hope that the serious concerns involving security in Israel and the Palestinian Territories will soon be allayed sufficiently to allow greater freedom of movement, especially with regard to contact between family members and access to the holy places,” the pope continued. “Palestinians, like any other people, have a natural right to marry, to raise families, and to have access to work, education and health care. I pray too that, with the assistance of the international community, reconstruction work can proceed swiftly wherever homes, schools or hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, especially during the recent fighting in Gaza.”
Earlier Wednesday, the pontiff’s motorcade drove through a crossing in the security barrier to reach the cradle of Christianity.
Later, he was to tour the Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional birth grotto, and visit a Palestinian refugee camp.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the pope’s visit amounts to “a call to end injustice and end occupation.”
Christians are a dwindling minority among Palestinians. Christians in Bethlehem say they hope the pope’s visit will discourage further Christian emigration.
You said: (and we all know the Catholic Church has selective memory about its own history and has actually fabricated a great deal of it)
I don’t know any such thing! What are you talking about???
It would be a lengthy process to go into great detail of all the areas that the Catholic Church has ignored or fabricated its own History.
But just a couple of examples:
1. The Popes of Rome Claim authority over all the Catholic (universal) church as passed to them in an unbroken line from the Apostle Peter, which is false.
2. The Catholic Church claims that the Crusades were a Holy Crusade to liberate the Holy Land, when in actual historical fact it was anything but! It was a cynical ploy to gain more wealth and power for the Popes.
The word Palestinian was indeed fabricated by those who you mentioned. However, the word Palestine was actually used by Rome for the area that we now know as Israel after Rome evicted all of the Jews or most of them for rebelling against Rome. Strange isn’t it that we have come full circle to find out that the Muslim is trying to again evict the Jewish people from the land that God gave them and Rome took away.
As for the Roman Catholic Church, they can have no real claim to being the inheritors of the New Testament Church. They have walked away from the Word of the Living God and replaced it with a Pharisaical set of traditions that have no support in God’s word. In fact almost everything they teach is contradicted by the Word of God. The pope is not the linial descendant of Peter simply because in this line that they claim to have are some real rotten people that could not act like they did and still be a believer in Jesus Christ.