Papal Pal: a Potpourri of this week's Popery

Politics already have intruded on the Pope's personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Benedict XVI has called for an independent Palestinian homeland and publically condemned the Shoah, the 'Final Solution' devised by the Third Reich which involved the systematic slaughter of six million Jews. (It's a touchy subject for the priest formerly known as Der Rottweiler. Some Israeli commentators did not detect sufficient contriteness nor compassion in a speech delivered by an erstwhile member of der Hitler Jugen. Benedict went on to serve in the German Army during the Second World War before deserting in the final year.) At an interfaith meeting in East Jerusalem, an angry Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi reportedly launched into a political speech denouncing Israel for atrocities in Gaza and when it was translated from Arabic, rabbis in attendance complained and the pope walked out shortly afterward. Among other things, the sheikh was upset that the pontiff had worn shoes inside a Jordanian mosque. His unscheduled speech lasted for six minutes, urging Christians to unite with Muslims against the Zionists! The pope shook his hand before departing, so he did not exactly leave in a huff.
Further Islamic ire was raised after the pope met the family of the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in Jerusalem but ignored Palestinian prisoners' families. There is disappointment that the Pope will not be visiting Gaza, where a lively Christian congregation of 3000 worshippers await him in the rubble of Operation Cast Lead. Permits for 100 Catholics to travel from Gaza and greet the Pope were granted by Israeli security, while 150 applicants were turned away.

Vatican vs Knights Templar

How the mighty fall always makes a great read. In Jerusalem, where the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself owns a family flat revamped from a Knights Templar dwelling, the medieval seems like comparatively recent history, so this tale is particularly gripping. Some 700 years after the fact, Pope Benedict XVI has revealed that these Knights were not heretics, despite their bad rep for spitting and kissing. Above is a venerable illustration of non-heretical crusader knights who were burnt at the stake on a Friday the 13th for, ahem, heresy. Peter Popham in Rome reports on the monastic knights who guarded the Al Aqsa mosque, snatched from jihadis, and profited from pilgrims.

One of the most iniquitous chapters in the history of the medieval church was revisited in Rome yesterday when the Vatican publisher Scrinium put on sale facsimiles of the trial of the Knights Templar order, held before Pope Clement V in 1308.

The book is unlikely to turn up in your local Borders': measuring 27 by 22in, printed on artificial parchment with replicas of the original papal seals, it is as close as the publishers can get to the appearance of the original document, which turned up in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001, having been mislaid for more than 300 years.

Academics and fans of Dan Brown's thrillers will be eager to get their hands on the book but it costs ¿5,900 per copy, and most of the 799 copies have already been reserved by specialist libraries. The 800th will be given to the Pope.

It ought to make uncomfortable reading for him. The Knights Templar, the order of monastic knights set up to defend Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, seized during the First Crusade, went into decline after Christians were expelled from the Holy Land in the 13th century. King Philip IV "the Fair" of France owed the order large amounts of money and land; to avoid repaying the debt, he prevailed on Pope Clement V, based in Avignon and dependent on his good offices, to put members on trial for heresy.

The pope tried them, and while he found them guilty of immorality, the key charge of heresy was found to be false. It had been alleged that while in Jerusalem they had been in the custom of spitting on crosses, and underwent an initiation ceremony that involved kissing.

They persuaded the pope and his judges that the spitting was done to prepare themselves for the dissembling they would be obliged to practice if captured by the Saracens, while the kissing was a way of promising complete obedience. The pope accepted their arguments and absolved them of heresy. This, however, did not satisfy Philip. The pope was pressured to reverse his verdict, and the head of the order and his closest associates were burnt at the stake. The order's riches were handed to a rival knightly order, and the surviving knights melted away. It was a demonstration of the power of realpolitik to trump justice.

The order's downfall stimulated the growth of legends and fables about the order. Founded in Jerusalem by veterans of the successful First Crusade of 1096, it was a potent armed force designed to protect Christian pilgrims. When the pope gave it special status – exemption from local laws and taxes and answerable to no one but the pontiff – it soon became uniquely rich and powerful.

The order developed a way for wealthy travellers to pay for services received by leaving lands and wealth at the disposal of a Templar group in Europe.

It believed, as did the Jews, that Al-Aqsa was the site of Solomon's Temple, from which sprung the belief that many holy relics had fallen into its hands. The Turin Shroud, fragments of the Cross and the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper – the Holy Grail – are among treasures it was popularly believed to have acquired.

Pope pooh-poohs Protestant churches & prays that the Jews convert

When the pope pooh-poohed protestant churches as defective, he riled Christian evangelicals and post-reformation High Church congregations the world over, particularly here in the Holy Land, birthplace of Jesus and Judaism. Church clerics are flabbergasted that the pontiff seems to be stirring the pot and encouraging rifts in Christian unity at a time when civilizations are clashing.

Pope Benedict XVI also has just revived the Tridentine Mass, a defunct liturgy, complete with a Good Friday prayer in Latin to convert the "perfidous Jews." Critics say an appeal to anti-Semitism to boost the ranks of Catholics is ill-advised. Appeasing traditionalists who years ago quit the Catholic church because they prefer the ancient services in Latin was the reason the Vatican spokesman cited. The number of Catholics in Europe are in decline.
The Vatican praised the old version for enriching faith and piety, and also the culture of many peoples.

"It is known, in fact, that the Latin liturgy of the Church in its various forms, in each century of the Christian era, has been a spur to the spiritual life of many saints, has reinforced many peoples in the virtue of religion and fecundated their piety."
In an explanatory note to the world's bishops, the Pope said he had seen in the post-Vatican II period "how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the church."
He added that it was clear that, in addition to older Catholics from the pre-Vatican II era, young people are also being attracted by the older form of the liturgy.

Meanwhile, the Catholic anti-defamation league has petitioned in Italy for the removal of "Miss Kitty", a looming statue of the formidable German pope dressed in blonde wig and fishnet stockings, and another artwork which has the face of Jesus Christ pixilated onto the body of a transvestite.

An artists' group insisted that the statues were meant to provoke thought and to defy "dogmatic and ecclesiastic censors."