THE GREAT JUBILEE CLOSES IN THE HOLY LAND

VATICAN CITY, JAN 2, 2001 (VIS) - This morning, in the church of St. Catherine which stands next to the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee 2000, celebrated a Mass that marked the closing of the Great Jubilee in the Holy Land.

The cardinal thanked the Committee for the Great Jubilee in the Holy Land for their work during this year's celebrations. "You would have wished," he said, "for a more peaceful Holy Land in which to welcome pilgrims, especially those from your own region. ... Yet such peace cannot be decreed, it does not only depend on a diplomatic process but derives from a conversion of spirits and hearts, it is based on respect for the dignity of all men, without discrimination and hindrance, and on free circulation in the social and professional spheres."

"Reconciliation and hope." he continued, "are two rays of light with which the Holy Year has not ceased to illuminate humanity and they must warm those who see everything quaking and sinking into the night of horror and shame."

After highlighting the fact that they had been "witnesses of atrocious scenes," that their nights had been "racked by nightmares" and, furthermore, that many of their houses had been destroyed, he said: "There is no true and stable reconciliation without measuring the depth of evil and the price of forgiveness."

Cardinal Etchegaray affirmed that hope is another word that, "like reconciliation, calls for courage. ... In the face of desperation with its thousands of faces and thousands of masks we must 'hope against all hope' like good children of Abraham. If there is one place where the state of hope must be decreed, that place is Bethlehem. Be the hope of those who have lost the taste for living together. ... God has more faith in man, than man does in himself."

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