JERUSALEM (AP) — Pope Francis has wrapped up his Holy Land trip with a Mass at what’s believed to be the site of the Last Supper before Jesus’s crucifixion.
Some ultra-Orthodox Jews had protested the Mass, because the Cenacle, or Upper Room, is above the traditional site of the biblical King David’s tomb.
Earlier Monday, the pope visited Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, and Islam’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
At Israel’s Holocaust museum, Francis kissed the hands of several survivors and prayed that such an evil would never be repeated. Joseph Gottdenker, born in Poland in 1942, said he told the pope how he was saved as a boy by Catholics who hid him during the Holocaust.
A high point of the three-day pilgrimage was Francis’s invitation to the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to join him at the Vatican next month to pray for peace. Both have accepted the pope’s invitation.
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229-r-14-(Choir singing in the Upper Room revered as the site of the Last Supper before Jesus’s crucifixion, during final Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on his Holy Land pilgrimage)–Sound of a choir singing during the final Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on his Holy Land pilgrimage, in the Upper Room revered as the site of the Last Supper before Jesus’s crucifixion. (26 May 2014)
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230-a-12-(Jerusalem resident Baruch Werdigger, in AP interview)-“of the place”-Jerusalem resident Baruch Werdigger says Israel is the Jewish homeland, but Pope Francis was a welcome visitor. (26 May 2014)
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231-a-05-(Colleen Doyle, guide for a Christian tour group from New Zealand, in AP interview)-“uniting the churches”-Colleen Doyle, guide for a Christian tour group from New Zealand, says Pope Francis is admired by non-Catholics. (26 May 2014)
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233-a-08-(Joseph Gottdenker, Holocaust survivor, in AP interview)-“of their pope”-Holocaust survivor Joseph Gottdenker says he told Pope Francis that a Catholic family saved his life during World War II. (26 May 2014)
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