Pope John Paul began a historic pilgrimage to Muslim Syria today with an urgent appeal for peace in the Middle East and indirect criticism of Israel.
His tour in the footsteps of St Paul the apostle, already a landmark of inter-faith unity for his groundbreaking gesture of reconciliation with the Orthodox Church in Greece, was to include the first visit by a Pope to a Muslim mosque.
In his address at Damascus airport, the Pope said he hoped that, in the region, fear will turn into trust and contempt to mutual esteem, that force will give way to dialogue, and that a genuine desire to serve the common good will prevail.
His visit, the first to Syria by a Pope, will give a boost to the 2.4 million Christians among Syria's 17 million people.
President Bashar al-Assad, who along with government ministers and clerics gave the Pope a warm welcome, called on the frail 80-year-old Pontiff to stand by the Arabs in their struggle to regain their land and their rights from Israel.
"We feel that in your prayers in which you recall the suffering of Jesus Christ, you will remember that there is a people in Lebanon, the Golan (Heights) and Palestine that is suffering from subjugation and persecution," he said.
"We expect you to stand by them against the oppressors so that they could regain what was unjustly taken from them."
Mr Assad, who stirred a storm in March by saying Israelis were more racist than Nazis, said the suffering of Arabs under Israeli occupation was similar to the biblical suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of first century Jews.
He said Israel was killing Palestinians, violating justice, occupying Arab land and attacking Muslim and Christian religious sites.
In response, the Pope quickly got to the heart of his hope for the trip - to encourage all sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict to change their attitudes and seek lasting peace.
"My pilgrimage is also an ardent prayer of hope," said the Pope, who on Monday will pray for peace at a town in the Golan Heights near the border with Israel.
"It is time to return to the principles of international legality; the banning of acquisition of territory by force, the right of peoples to self-determination, respect for the resolutions of the United Nations and the Geneva convention," he said, repeating a statement he made last January at the Vatican.
After a short break, the Pontiff had a private audience with Mr Assad at the presidential palace. Details of the meeting were not immediately disclosed, official sources said.
The Pope's delicate pilgrimage of religious and political peace will take him to the demolished town of Quneitra, which Israel returned in 1974 after capturing it from Syria along with the rest of the Golan Heights in the Six Day War of 1967.
He said true and lasting peace would be achieved only if there was a new attitude of understanding and respect among Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Middle East.
He also called for a new spirit of Christian-Muslim dialogue: "Together we acknowledge the one indivisible God, the Creator of all that exists. Together wemust proclaim to the world that the name of the one God is a name of peace and a summons to peace."