Pope Francis has invited Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas to pray at the Vatican.
The sense of irony here is overwhelming.
When Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President , Mahmoud Abbas come together with Pontifex Maximus Francis, how many of the men there will be believers in … in any God, much less the true God?
Peres is a Jew, a people who are overwhelmingly atheist. If Peres believes in any Deity, that belief has been largely silent . As for Abbas, his people are largely believers but in a God who is adamantly monotheist .. militantly opposed to the Roman Catholic triune divinity. Whether Abbas himself is a believer is hard to guess but is also largely irrelevant to his lifestyle.
Then there is the Pope. He is an professional believer. That sincere belief is in a Deity who is the antithesis of the beliefs of Muslims and Jews … A belief so intense that we are now into the third millennia of a global effort to make that triune deity the one God for the whole world.
The images of the crusaders’ long, cross shaped swords and the Roman Catholic missionaries’ success in extinguishing the deities indigenous to Africa, Europe and the Americas must create an air of skepticism. Pope Francis has stressed that this prayer is not seeking to get involved in peace negotiations between the two sides, which collapsed in acrimony in April. Rather, the Vatican says the only motive is for the presidents to pray together in the Vatican gardens.
“No-one is presumptuous enough to think peace will break out on Monday,” Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa – in charge of Catholic sites in the Holy Land and a key organizer of the prayer meeting – told Reuters.