This Good Friday, praying for the peace of Jerusalem...
Among the prayers which accompany the Good Friday liturgy are
those from the psalms which invite us to pray, especially on the
anniversary of the Lord’s crucifixion, for the peace of that city
which is a symbol for the peace of God’s kingdom, the Jerusalem
on high. Praying for the peace of Jerusalem is also in the prayers
of the Jewish community at Passover.
This year, we pray for peace as bombs fall on Yugoslavia. I was
at a meeting in Rome last week when the NATO forces began bombing
Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. NATO’s goal is to force the Yugoslav
president to cease uprooting and killing Albanians in Kosovo.
Since many of the U.S. planes took off from bases in northern
Italy, demonstrations against the bombing were strong there. At
best, many of the Italian papers, like the Italian government
itself, accepted the bombings as a temporary measure which, whether
President Milosevic comes to the bargaining table or not, must
not be continued beyond this week.
The Holy See called the bombings a defeat for humanity, without
condemning them directly. Vatican diplomacy did what it almost
always does in these situations: it condemned the Yugoslav government’s
treatment of its own Albanian citizens, it decried armed attacks
by all sides, it asked that the bombing cease and that all parties
come to peace negotiations prepared to make concessions. The Italian
TV compared Pope John Paul II’s pleas for peace with those of
Pope Pius XII at the outbreak of the Second World War. Then, Pius
XII said that nothing would be lost by peace, and all might be
lost by war. Pope Pius XII was right, and it was strange seeing
him pictured speaking in old film clips on TV and imagining what
might not have happened had he been heard. The difficulty with
these pleas, of course, lies in the fact that negotiations have
already broken down, and it is in the face of their collapse that
the resort to military action is taken. This Holy Week, all Catholics
should be praying for an end to U.S. involvement in the bombings
through a resumption of the negotiations between Serbs and Albanians
in Yugoslavia.
At the end of this American Century, two countries pieced together
by President Woodrow Wilson and other victors at the Versailles
Peace Conference after World War I have come apart: Czechoslovakia
and Yugoslavia. Wilson rejected Pope Benedict XV’s proposals for
bringing the First World War to a negotiated conclusion. He disliked
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and gladly engineered its breakup
into its nationalist and ethnic components. In an irony of history,
Wilson’s own handiwork at the beginning of this century has itself
come apart at century’s end, leaving another U.S. administration
to deal with the pieces.
President Wilson, even though he liked to imagine himself the
champion of small nations, was hostile to the independence of
Ireland; and a bitter war for Irish independence followed the
Versailles Peace Conference’s refusal to deal with “the Irish
question.” Eventually, the condition for Ireland’s independence
from Britain was the partition of the island, a division which
sowed more conflict. The on again, off again violence that has
accompanied talks about Ireland’s future for the past thirty years
still disturbs the peace this Holy Week. A year ago, the “Good
Friday Accords” signed by Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland
and Northern Ireland’s major political parties offered real hope
that a stable framework had been found for working toward a permanent
peace in Ireland. But splinter groups on both sides have rejected
the Good Friday accords’ provision to disarm, and people continue
to be killed since the accords were signed. Two days before St.
Patrick’s Day this year, Rosemary Nelson, a Catholic civil rights
lawyer, died when a bomb placed under her car exploded. Since
even stalled accords are better than bombs, prayers for permanent
peace in Ireland should be on our lips this Good Friday, the first
anniversary of the accords.
And what of Jerusalem itself? A few weeks ago, Archbishop Jean-Louis
Tauran, the Vatican’s Foreign Secretary, was in Washington, D.C.,
to speak about the status of Jerusalem. He said that the Middle
East, as a zone of convergence of great civilizations, religions
and complex problems, defies easy understanding. He went on to
explain the Church’s two thousand year history in the land of
Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection and reviewed the status of
the Christian communities in the Holy Land. Religiously, the living
communities of Arab Christians native to the Holy Land assure
that the sites and shrines sacred to our faith will not become
merely museums for foreign pilgrims; and the Vatican is concerned
about Arab Christians having a future in Israel and in the territory
governed by the PLO. Politically, the Holy See’s initiatives are
governed now by diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Jordan
and the State of Israel and by official relations with the PLO,
all entered into in the same year, 1994.
In discussions about Jerusalem, the Holy See speaks from its own
sense of the identity of the Holy City. Vatican diplomacy aims
to protect Jerusalem’s historical, religious and cultural characteristics;
equality of rights and treatment for Jews, Muslims and Christians;
freedom of religion and worship for all and of access to the shrines
for residents and pilgrims alike. The history of Jerusalem prevents
its being just one more modern city in an independent state, and
the Holy See has therefore consistently asked for international
guarantees for the holy places and sacred shrines in Jerusalem.
For many reasons, this is a difficult request to spell out, but
it could be a central element in a just and lasting peace for
Jerusalem.
In 1992, Pope John Paul II said to the diplomatic corps accredited
to the Vatican, “What a blessing it would be if this Holy Land,
where God spoke and Jesus walked, could become a special place
for encounter and prayer for peoples, if this Holy City of Jerusalem
could be a sign and instrument of peace and reconciliation!” This
Good Friday, as the annual collection is taken up for the Holy
Land during the liturgical commemoration of the Lord’s death,
let each of us pray for the peace of Jerusalem. God bless you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
