Love Jerusalem, work for peace, pope tells interreligious group

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — If Jews, Christians and Muslims truly recognize Jerusalem as a sacred city, their desire for the city to be at peace must come before any political claim on its territory, Pope Francis said.

“God’s compassion for Jerusalem must become our own, more powerful than any ideology or political alignment,” the pope said March 9 during a meeting with members of the Joint Working Group for Dialogue, a group formed in 2017 by the Palestinian Commission for Interreligious Dialogue and the Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.

For their discussions this year, members of the group decided to focus on the spiritual significance of Jerusalem.

Meeting in the library of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis told the group that he wanted to repeat “the appeal I made in 2019, together with His Majesty the King of Morocco, that Jerusalem be considered, ‘the common patrimony of humanity and especially of the followers of the three monotheistic religions, as a place of encounter and as a symbol of peaceful coexistence.'”

Muslims, Christians and Jews, he said, must increase their love for the city, which “deserves respect and reverence on the part of all.”

Pope Francis told the group that the city was the setting of numerous events in Jesus’ life: “As an infant, he was presented in the Temple, and in the company of his parents he traveled to Jerusalem each year for the feast of Passover. In the Holy City Jesus taught and performed many of his miracles.”

And, the pope said, most importantly it was in Jerusalem that “he completed his mission through his passion, death and resurrection, the paschal mystery at the heart of the Christian faith.”

As Jesus entered the city a few days before his death, the pope said, the Gospel of Luke recounts how he “wept over Jerusalem.”

“We should not pass over these words in haste,” Pope Francis said. “These tears of Jesus should be contemplated in silence.”

“Brothers and sisters, how many men and women — Jews, Christians and Muslims — have wept and in our day continue to weep for Jerusalem,” the pope said.

“At times,” he said, “we too are moved to tears when we think of the Holy City, for she is like a mother whose heart cannot be at peace due to the sufferings of her children.”