Pope Francis today begins his pastoral visit to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan.
In some ways, it’s more remarkable for just how unremarkable it is.
How different it was back in 1964, when Pope Paul VI became the first pontiff to visit the Holy Land.
For Israel, that visit was a sign of international acceptance, notwithstanding that the pope raised hackles by refusing to recognize the Jewish state’s political existence or meet with its leaders.
All that has changed. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI each traveled to Jerusalem on full state visits that highlighted the enormous strides in Catholic-Jewish relations.
Officially, Pope Francis’ visit commemorates the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul’s landmark meeting with Patriarch Athenagoras — which opened a path to ending the 900-year-old schism between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy.
On this trip Francis plainly hopes to avoid politics.
But that’s rarely possible in the Middle East. For example, the pope’s official itinerary recognizes the still-nonexistent “State of Palestine” as a political reality.
On the other hand, Francis will also lay a wreath at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism.
We wish Pope Francis well and hope his visit leads to some recognition that when it comes to the Middle East’s shrinking populations of Christians — including Palestinians — the problem is not in Jerusalem.