GENERAL AUDIENCE: JOHN PAUL II RECALLS HIS JUBILEE PILGRIMAGE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 16, 2001 (VIS) - During today's general audience, held in St. Peter's Square, the Pope spoke about his recent Jubilee pilgrimage to Greece, Syria, and Malta, where, he said, he testified to "the affection and esteem of the Catholic Church" for the Orthodox Church, and reaffirmed "the sincere openness with which the Church views the believers of Islam."

"On the Areopagus of Athens," he remarked, "resounded the words of St. Paul's celebrated discourse recorded in the Acts of the Apostles." This discourse "constitutes a model of inculturation and as such is always contemporary."

John Paul II recalled that after Greece he travelled to Syria, where, "on the way to Damascus, the Risen Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus. ... It was a return to the origins - as it was for Abraham - a return to the call, to vocation. This is what I thought of in visiting the Memorial of St. Paul."

After recalling that Syria today is a predominantly Muslim country, the Holy Father said: "Interreligious dialogue with Islam becomes always more important and necessary, at the beginning of the Third Millennium." He also referred to the "very warm welcome" given to him by the civil authorities and the Great Mufti, who accompanied the Pope in his visit to the Great Mosque of the Omayyads.

The Pope noted that on the Golan Heights in Syria he "could not but make a special supplication to God for peace in the Middle East. ... In a certain sense, my spirit remained there, and my prayer continues and will not cease until vendetta gives way to reconciliation and the recognition of reciprocal rights."

"The last stage of my pilgrimage in the footsteps of Paul was the island of Malta, where the Apostle spent three months, after the boat carrying him to Rome as a prisoner was shipwrecked." The Holy Father went on to affirm that in Malta he "had the joy to beatify two sons of their people," Fr. Giorgio Preca and Ignazio Falzon, together with Sr. Maria Adeodata Pisani. "Once again I wished to indicate the way of sanctity as the main way for the believers of the Third Millennium."

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