00.02
Sunday morning in Bethlehem. In the Catholic church of St. Catherine High Mass is devoted to Saint Joseph.
The church is full. Of course many tourists come in here - the Catholic place of worship is next to the orthodox main church*.
00.22
But most of the faithful at High Mass are locals. Catholics are a minority in the Holy Land, both in Israel and in the autonomous Palestinian area which includes Bethlehem.
Around 180,000 Christians live in the Holy Land today. The minority is Catholic - most of them are Christian Orthodox.
Three quarters of the Christians are Arabs. The others are either members of Christian orders in monasteries or members of Jewish families who emigrated from Eastern Europe to Israel.
01:02
The nativity site in Bethlehem this morning. Thousands of Christians and Muslims greet the pope in Jesus' birthplace.
01:10
On his arrival the holy father kissed Palestinian ground. A symbolic gesture, seen by many as a recognition of Palestinian claims of statehood.
01:21
Open - ‘Let us pray'
01:22
Islam is omnipresent in Bethelhem today - it is seen and heard everywhere - the pope's mass is briefly interrupted by the muezzin's call to prayer.
01:40
A Christian Arab recalls the old, Christian Bethlehem.
01:48
Voiceover
Dr. Joseph Dabdoub, (medical) Doctor
It was a simple town. The people were simple. They didn't aspire to a fancy lifestyle. And the church played a large role in their lives. It formed a kind of focus for the people who lived here.
02:21
Even today there are still Sundaydebates about business and politics in the churchyard. Dr. Dabdoub's family is one of the most established Christian families in Bethlehem. They emigrated from Veneto in the 16th century and finally became Arab.
02.38
Voiceover Paulette Dabdoub
We never had a problem sending our children to church to practise their religion. But nowadays, everything has changed, unfortunately.
Josef Dabdoub, doctor
Bethlehem always had a Christian majority. If you look at the architecture and the excavations you will see that Christians always made up the majority here until 1948. A lot of refugees came in 1948. Near our house here there's a refugee camp - there's another one near Rachel's grave, and a further one south of Bethlehem in Deheishe. All of the people there are Muslims.
03:32
Bethlehem is a small town, which only livens up when the tour buses arrive. The town lives on the business generated by religion. Traders complain that the tourist groups organised in Israel spend too little time here to spread their money around.
The most dominant culture you see on the street is that of middle Eastern Muslims. It's most noticeable with the women - you hardly used to see girls wearing headscarves, but today even schoolgirls wear them.
Muslim women in the Holy Land marry earlier than Christian women and have on average twice as many children. Only half as many Arab women as Christian women work outside the home. Their lifestyle is modest. The high number of refugees around the town is markedly lowering the standard of living. It is not a homogenous society. The established Christian population is better educated. But even that doesn't guarantee any priveleges.
04:33
There is still discrimination. If a Christian and a Muslim apply for the same job, competence doesn't come into the equation, but his religion plays a large part, and the Muslim is favoured.
Voiceover - man
We could never say what we wanted. Since the day I was born until this moment, I have never been able to say what I think. Neither under the Jordanians, nor under the British, nor the Israelis nor the present politicians. We have no freedom of speech.
05:14
Just a few kilometres north is Jerusalem, the garden of the Dormitio monastery. Appearances are not deceiving. Christians live in their own world in Jerusalem. Contact with the volatile Middle Eastern surroundings is limited.
05:32
Voiceover
Prior Brother Thomas, Dormitio Abbey
What you have to realise is that the individual communities are not the focal point, but that with our minority of 2 per cent, each individual Christian counts here. So when we meet one another, we see each other as Christians and not primarily as monks, Catholics, Protestants or Greek Orthodox. The most important thing is that we live as an ecumenical community, that we are all Christians together in this town and in the Holy Land. That is incredibly important in our 2 per cent Christian minority, and the communities play a less significant role.
06:09
In Jerusalem's old town each religious community lives in ist own quarter. But the tensions don't run between Christians and Muslims - they run between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.
The state of Israel was supposed to provide a safe home for Jews so brutally decimalised in the European holocaust. Safety from Christian persecution led to decades of bloody conflict with the Arab world, which doesn't want to foot the bill for Europe.
The wailing wall is where the political conflict becomes religious. Down below, the Jews mourn the destroyed temple. And at the top, the dome of the mosque shines where the temple once stood.
The human drama of three world religions reaches ist pinnacle with the Pope's visit to Yad Vashem.
06:57
Voiceover Jeguda Bauer, Historian in Yad Vashem.
I do think there's a difference between saying that Christians have sinned against the Jewish people, and that the church itself, which according to Catholics is God's representative on earth, is infallible. The mistake was made by people, by Christians , which is what the pope said. Seen from a Jewish point of view, that's not enough. The church as an institution has sinned. We can talk about that. The opportunity for dialogue has been opened. Of course there are different perspectives, but the pope has enabled dialogue to begin - and that is very important.
07:53
John Paul the Second. A pope as a simple pilgrim in the mother church* of Bethlehem. Can the Catholic church make a spiritual connection here in the place where it all began?
End inserts at 08:05
Report: Eva Zitterbart
Camera:Mike Kotyk
Edit :Dani Shiovitz