Inside the Pilgrimage

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Quizzed about Pope John Paul II's visit to the Holy Land, Israel's Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben Ami predicted it would be "almost of eschatological magnitude." Eschatology is a term used to describe ultimate things such as judgment, heaven and hell. Since Ben Ami is not Christian, his use of it regarding a Catholic pontiff was probably figurative. In political and police terms, the word fits admirably: the Pope's trip is a remarkable culmination, and its stakes will--for better or worse--be high.

At its simplest, John Paul's journey to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, commencing next Monday, is an aging pilgrim's search for personal, even mystical, fulfillment--at the stretch of river where Jesus was baptized, in the town where he was reared and at the places where he is said to have preached, been betrayed and risen from the dead. A visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial will also have deep meaning to a man who lost childhood friends in the death camps.

But given Karol Wojtyla's job description and his trip's locus, little else about it is personal or simple. A billion Roman Catholics and innumerable other Christians will follow his every encounter in the footsteps of their Saviour. Many Jews will cautiously applaud what Aharon Lopez, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See, calls "with all due respect...the climax" of recent Catholic-Jewish amity. That's the upside. The downside? It will be a security nightmare and a diplomatic high-wire act. Says Israeli police official David Tsur: "It touches all the nerves we can think of."

The most prominent and exposed of these is the city of Jerusalem. In January, Israel's Chief Rabbi Yisrael Lau asserted that John Paul's visit to the Western Wall would constitute "de facto recognition...of a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty." The Vatican supports no such thing. Weeks later, it signed an agreement with the P.L.O., whose preamble stated that unilateral actions by any party in Jerusalem are "morally and legally unacceptable." The Israelis were furious, but the trip was kept on track.

The Pope will also face pressure from Jews who, like Lau, regard Vatican statements about the Holocaust as "too little, too late." They will probably feel similarly about the homily, scheduled for last Sunday, in which John Paul was expected to reiterate regret for Christians' past anti-Semitic acts without admitting church culpability. Lau tells TIME he expects private pledges from John Paul to halt the canonization process for Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of "silence" during the Holocaust, but such promises are unlikely.

The neatest illustration of the week's complexity, however, is the Pope's Mass at Nazareth's Basilica of the Annunciation. It is scheduled for March 25, the feast day marking the angelic announcement to a young Nazarene Jew that she would give birth to the Son of God. Last year the Israeli government appalled the Vatican by issuing a permit for a mosque to be built near the basilica. There was dark talk that the trip would be scuttled. It wasn't but another problem arose. The 25th is a Saturday, and 2,000 Jewish religious figures protested that attending Israeli policemen would be forced to break the Sabbath.

All told, 18,000 of Israel's 26,000 police will patrol the trip, which Israeli police chief Yehuda Wilk calls "the most complicated in [Israel's] history." There are concerns about terrorist missiles (the Pope, atypically, will travel in a Blackhawk helicopter, a small target) and about the itinerary's effect on his health ("at the limit of what's prudent," says a veteran of 60 papal trips). And the expense: just one preparation, the hollowing of a hillside near the town of Korazim for a papal Mass, cost the Israelis $3 million.

That hillside, however, is where Jesus supposedly delivered the Sermon on the Mount. There, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, the Pope will address a congregation of 100,000 and share with them Christ's body and blood. Some things are worth every bit of trouble that goes into them.

--Reported by Lisa Beyer and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem, Greg Burke/Vatican City and Emily Mitchell/New York

With reporting by Lisa Beyer and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem, Greg Burke/Vatican City and Emily Mitchell/New York