Early in the afternoon of March 20, 2000, after a four-hour flight from Rome in his special plane, the last leg escorted by Mirage jets from the Jordanian air force, Pope John Paul II arrived in Amman, Jordan. King Abdullah II greeted the Pope as he stepped form the plane, and the two walked together down a long red carpet to meet waiting dignitaries. How odd it is that heads of state, high officials, celebrities, and crowds of cheering thousands and even hundreds of thousands greet the Roman Pontiff wherever he travels, whereas the Christ whose Vicar he claims to be was “despised and reject of men” (Isaiah 53:3).
Christ promised His disciples that they, too, would be treated by the world exactly as He was: “The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you...” (John 15:20). And so it was. The apostles, true to their Lord and to His Word, were martyred. Peter was crucified, traditionally upside down. How odd, then, that Peter’s supposed successor, who even claims to be Christ on earth, is loved, lauded, consulted, and feted by the world’s most powerful leaders. Something is amiss!
In his formal speech John Paul II recalled the “great desire” he had often expressed since the beginning of his pontificate in 1978 “to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.” He referred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims as “believers” in the one God and urged them to consider themselves to be “one people and one single family.” In contrast, Christ said that the “single family” to which all mankind belonged had the devil for its father (John 8:44), that to enter the family of God required a new birth by the Spirit of God through faith in Christ and His redemptive sacrifice upon the cross (John 3:3-17), and He called all mankind to repent or perish (Matthew 9:13, Luke 13:35).
The Pope went almost immediately about 15 miles southwest of Amman to Mount Nebo’s summit in the heart of Jordan to see the view Moses had of the Promised Land from that vantage point of 2,500 feet elevation. There he was welcomed by Franciscan monks, the Catholic bishops of Jordan, and entertained by a children’s choir. The following day the Pope celebrated Mass in a downtown Amman stadium before about 35,000 people, including 2,000 children participating for the first time.
After a half-hour flight from Amman, the Pope’s plane touched down at Tel Aviv’s airport, where the Pontiff was ceremoniously welcomed by Israeli President Ezer Weizman and Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In his speech the Pope referred again to his long-standing desire to visit the Holy Land and stressed that his was a “personal pilgrimage” by the Bishop of Rome “to the origins of our faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Once again, apostate Judaism and pagan Islam were acknowledged as true faiths serving the one true God. In fact, Allah is a heathen deity and both Islam and Judaism reject the triune God of the Bible and Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners. Indeed, Islam claims that rather than Christ dying in our place for our sins, another died on the cross in His place while He was taken to heaven alive, from whence He must return and die at last as a man on earth.
On hand to greet the Pope as part of the welcoming ceremony were leaders of the Israel government, rabbis and leading Catholic clergy from Jerusalem, along with Muslim leaders. President Ezer Weizman praised the Pope’s “contribution to the condemnation of anti-Semitism as a sin against heaven and against humanity” as well as his “plea for pardon for the past actions committed against the Jews by members of the Church.” As we know, it was the Church itself that persecuted Jews, and the “plea for pardon” avoided any specifics; but Israel is seeking friends and in that pursuit is willing to close its eyes to the well-known truth. From Tel Aviv the Pope went to spend the next several nights in the residence of the Vatican’s representative to Israel known as the “apostolic nuncio,” a term and position completely foreign to anything taught or experienced either by Christ or His apostles.
The Himalayan hypocrisy of the papal visit was evident in the Pope’s repeated references to the Israelis as God’s people and to the Promised Land, while at the same time upholding the claim of non-Jews to parts of that land and supporting the claims of the international community to control the destiny of Jerusalem. The Pope repeatedly referred to Jerusalem as holy to Muslims in spite of the fact that it is not mentioned even once in the Koran and never was considered a holy site to Muslims until very recently as a ploy to expel the Jews. In contrast, Jerusalem is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible and God Himself repeatedly calls it the City of David and the place where He has placed His name forever.
Conspicuous by its absence was any admission by the Pope or referenced by his Israeli hosts to his Church’s consistent anti-Semitism throughout the centuries. Missing also was any reference by either party to the resolute resistance on the part of the Roman Catholic Church to the very birth of Israel. Further, the Pope and the Israelis maintained a strange conspiracy of silence also concerning the Vatican’s consistent opposition to Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Political correctness was carefully honored. Throwing that facade aside, let us look briefly at only a part of the record.
Pope Urban II, who inspired the First Crusade in 1096, called the Jews “an accursed race, utterly alienated form God.” The Pope urged the crusaders to “start upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre to wrest that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves.” Urban II’s offer of full forgiveness of sins for participants brought forth hordes of volunteers who, under the banner of the cross, massacred Christ’s earthly brethren, the Jews, by the thousands all along the route to Jerusalem. The Crusade leader, Godfrey of Bouillon, vowed to avenge the blood of Jesus upon the Jews, leaving not one alive. Upon taking the city of David, the crusaders chased the Jews into the synagogue and set it ablaze.
In 1205, Pope Innocent III said that the Jews, “by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude.” In 1311, the Council of Vienna forbade all intercourse between Christians and Jews. The Council of Zamora ruled that Jews must be kept in strict subjection. In 1434, the Council of Basel confined the Jews to ghettos and forced them to wear a distinguishing badge.
In 1555, Pope Paul IV reduced Jews to slaves and rag merchants. Marriage between a Catholic and a Jew was punishable by death. One synagogue was allowed in each city; the others were destroyed, seven out of eight in Rome suffering that fate. Succeeding popes treated Jews as lepers without rights, among them Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI. Addressing the Roman Curia in 1873, Pope Pius IX branded all Jews as “money-lusting enemies of Christ and Christianity.” As late as 1882, Rome’s Jesuit journal, Civilta Cattolica, claimed that Judaism required crucifying Christian children and using their blood in ceremonies.
In his diaries Theodore Herzl relates that when in 1904 he asked Pope Pius X for his support of the Zionist movement, the Pope refused with these harsh words, “We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it. As head of the Church, I cannot recognize the Jewish people...if you come to Palestine we will be ready with churches and priests to baptize you.” The Pope placed himself solidly among the enemies of God by refusing to sanction what God had repeatedly promised!
In 1919, Cardinal Pietro Gaspari, Vatican Secretary of State, wrote that “the danger that frightens us the most is the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.” In hundreds of Old Testament prophecies God promised to return His chosen people to the land He had given them. How could fulfillment of God’s solemn promises be both opposed by Roman Catholicism and the very thing which it found most frightening? Yet this proposition to the Jews worldwide and to the restoration of the Jewish state in Israel has been the consistent pursuit of Roman Catholicism throughout history. No further proof is needed of the anti-God and anti-Christ nature of this false religious system.
For centuries anti-Semitism was an integral part of Roman Catholicism. A large part of that attitude can be traced to the Roman Catholic dogma that Catholics, not Jews, are God’s Chosen People, a dogma which is maintained to this day. A 1928 Vatican decree referred to Jews as “the people formerly chosen by God.” It is commonly acknowledged that Hitler could not have created a national hatred of Jews in Germany leading to the Holocaust without centuries of Church-inspired anti-Semitism.
On April 26, 1933, the Führer reminded Vatican representatives Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinman that for 1,500 years their Church had regarded Jews as parasites to be killed and that he intended a “final solution to the Jewish problem.”
Before he became Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, papal nuncio to Germany, had given Vatican money to Hitler to help start the Nazi Party. The 1933 Vatican Concordat Pacelli negotiated with Hitler gave the Nazis a certain legitimacy and, in Hitler’s words, was a great help in the “struggle against international Jews.” Upon becoming Pope, Pacelli sent a condescending message to the Führer assuring him of the Vatican’s good will. In part it said:
To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich!
We recall with great pleasure the many years we spent in Germany as Apostolic Nuncio, when we did all in our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State. Now...how much more ardently do we pray to reach that goal...
This was 1939 and Hitler’s abuse of and intention for the Jews had been fully exposed to the world. In January of that year, Hitler had warned that the outbreak of war would “result...in the extermination of the Jewish race.”
On June 22, 1943, with the smoke of incinerated Jews hanging in the air across Europe, Pope Pius XII once again reiterated his Church’s continual opposition to God’s promises to His chosen people. In a blunt letter to President Roosevelt, the Pope rejected making the Promised Land of Israel (which he called Palestine) a Jewish homeland:
It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left nineteen centuries before. If a “Hebrew Home” is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave, new problems would arise.
No axiom in history, indeed. But what bearing does that have upon what God has promised in literally hundreds of biblical prophecies! Pius XII never spoke out publicly against the Holocaust, nor did he attempt privately to dissuade Hitler from annihilating the Jews. The Nazi archives have yielded no letter from the Pope to Hitler opposing the Holocaust or supporting Jews. The American archives, however, contain proof that Pius XII took the time and had a firm enough conviction to express himself forcefully to President Roosevelt against the return of the Jews to the land which God had given them as a heritage forever.
In 1947, the United Nations, troubled by a rare tinge of conscience in the wake of the Holocaust, partitioned “Palestine,” giving 18 percent to the Jews and 82 percent to the Arabs. The Vatican used its influence to insist that UN Resolution 181, giving the Jews this meager part of the land God had promised them, included the provision that Jerusalem must remain an “international city.” It must not be under the domain of Israel, though it had been their capital since Jerusalem’s founding by David nearly 3,000 years before.
Again one is overtaken with astonishment that the supposed true church which claims to represent God and Christ could so firmly oppose and even be frightened by the prospect of God fulfilling His promises to bring His chosen people back into the Promised Land. It is equally astonishing that after this long history of opposition, Pope John Paul II could pretend that the Roman Catholic Church is the friend of Israel. Even the Pope’s current words and deeds belie fiction.
The Second Vatican Council in 1965 affirmed the centuries-old claim that Roman Catholics had replaced Jews as God’s chosen people: “the church is the new people of God....” Catholic Rome calls itself the Holy City, the City of God, the Eternal City—titles God gave Jerusalem. Indeed, it was not until 1994, a long 46 years after Israel’s birth and 16 years into John Paul II’s pontificate, that the Vatican, having consistently sided with the Arabs against Israel, finally gave reluctant recognition to the existence of the Jewish state.
By helicopter the Pontiff flew from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. At his presidential palace, Yasser Arafat enthusiastically greeted his friend the Pontiff, returning the favor of the warm receptions the Pope has on many occasions given the PLO leader in Rome. These cordial encounters date back to the days when Arafat was known to the whole world as one of the worst terrorists and mass murderers in history. Instead of rebuking Arafat for his publicly and repeatedly outspoken passion to annihilate Israel and for his anti-Christian Islamic beliefs, the Pope has been a warm friend and supporter.
John Paul’s trip to Bethlehem was in response to Arafat’s prior invitation to join him there to celebrate “our Jesus Christ.” Our Jesus Christ? Arafat says Jesus was a Palestinian freedom fighter against Israel, and the Pope smiles and blesses him!
Visiting the Palestinian Dheisheh refugee camp, the Pope “stopped in a cinder-block schoolroom to make his remarks about the ‘degrading’ conditions in which the refugees have now been living for more than half a century.” Said the Pontiff, “Only a resolute commitment on the part of the leaders of the Middle East, and of the international community in general, can solve the causes of your current situation.” The Pope particularly “singled out [for praise] the Catholic services and the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, which helps to administer dozens of camps....”1 There was no rebuke for the Arab nations with their oil billions for keeping the original 350,000 refugees in squalid camps (where a high birth rate has multiplied their numbers into the millions) nor any question why, in contrast, the tiny and impoverished new-born nation of Israel had been able very quickly to absorb over 800,000 refugees of its own pouring in from Arab states where they had been persecuted since the advent of Islam. These genuine refugees had left everything behind to reach a haven of safety which had never before existed for them.
Surely the Pope could not be ignorant of the fact that the Arabs themselves had created the Palestinian refugees, having rejected the 1947 UN partition of Palestine, determined that the Jews would not possess any part of it. Israel had been content and only wanted to live at peace. The new state of Israel had instantly been attached with the overwhelming force of the regular armies of six Arab nations. The Arab High Command had broadcast orders over radio day and night for all Arabs to get out while its armies drove the Jews into the Mediterranean.
As for the international community and the UN’s vaunted administration of the refugee camps, it is no secret that Israel would solve the problem of the refugees under its control, but the Arabs and the UN will not allow it to do so. More than a million Palestinians in refugee camps came under Israeli control as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel offers them state land, electricity, sanitation, streets, and schools and has built nine residential projects housing 10,000 families. Arab nations oppose Israel’s help for the refugees. The United Nations annually adopts the following astonishing resolutions which betray its hypocritical double standard:
The General Assembly...demands that Israel desist from the...resettlement of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip...
The General Assembly...calls once again upon Israel...to refrain from any action that leads to the...resettlement of Palestine refugees in the West Bank....
John Paul II held to a busy schedule, traveling throughout Israel for several days. On March 24, he celebrated Mass on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee. In a demonstration of the Pope’s immense popularity, more than 100,000 young people attended, probably the largest gathering of any kind in Israel’s history. They included pilgrims from around the world, about 17,000 from Italy, 9,000 from Spain, 10,000 from America, 1,000 from Asia, and many other from Israel and the surrounding Arab countries. In places of heavy Muslim concentration, such as Nazareth, John Paul II rode in his famous Pope-mobile accompanied by heavy security. There, too, on March 25, he celebrated Mass at a Catholic basilica.
That same day found the Pontiff once again back in Jerusalem for an ecumenical meeting with religious leaders hosted by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. Welcomed by Patriarch Diodoros I to “the throne room” of the Orthodox patriarchate, the Pontiff issued another strong ecumenical call to the leaders of the various branches of traditional Christianity, declaring that “it is essential to overcome the scandalous impression caused by our dissension and our controversies.” Of course, it has been repeatedly made very clear that “unity” will not allow any compromise on Rome’s part. There can be no revision of her dogmas, but recognition of the Pope’s sovereignty is required by all. Unity means uniting with Rome. The infallible declarations of her popes and dogmatic pronouncements of her councils will not allow it to be otherwise.
On March 26, his final day in Jerusalem, the Pope met with the ancient city’s leading Muslim officials. He held talks with Sheikh Idrimah Sabri in the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, then visited the Western Wall. There he prayed silently and inserted in a crack between the stones a small paper containing the same prayer he had recited in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome during the “Day of Pardon” ceremony—a prayer asking God’s forgiveness for sins committed against Jews, not by his Church and predecessor popes and bishops, but by “Christians.” No specific deeds or perpetrators were mentioned. Presumably God knows the evil committed and by whom, and indeed He does and it will be judged righteously in that Day.