ISRAEL - Mar. 26 - Pope Crowns Pilgrimage With Tribute To Jews.

Pope John Paul ends his week-long pilgrimage with a spiritual tour of the city's most sacred sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Before returning to Rome, the Pope pleads for forgiveness for historic Christian mistreatment of Jews at the great stone Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. The Pope also appeals for Christian unity in a mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus's crucifixion, death and resurrection. He calls it "the most hallowed place on earth". Making only the 2nd Holy Land trip by a Pope, to mark the new millennium, the Pontiff begins the day with a visit to Al Aqsa mosque, Islam's 3rd holiest shrine. Speaking to the Grand Mufti Ikrima Sabri, the leading Muslim theologian in Jerusalem, the Pope says: "Jerusalem has always been revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Jerusalem is the holy city par excellence". A message the Pope placed in a crack in the wall, reads: "We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant".

A government spokesman takes the papal message from the crack in the wall to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for the 6m Jews killed by the Nazis. (On Mar. 23, the Polish-born Pontiff made an emotional pilgrimage to Yad Vashem.) The government spokesman, Moshe Fogel, says he wanted the Pope's letter to be put on display there for all to see rather than have it swept away in the wind. Asked about the Pope's blessing at the sacred site, Israel's Minister for Diaspora Affairs Rabbi Michael Melchior says Jews did have a "psychological problem" with the Christian cross. In the shadow of Al Aqsa mosque, more than a dozen Muslim protesters shout abuse at Islamic and Palestine Liberation Organisation officials after they met the Pope. They shout: "You people have just given the keys of Jerusalem and Al Aqsa to the Pope. Shame on you". (Religious rivalries have dogged the Pope's every step on his tour through the Holy Land.) On Mar. 26, Palestinian officials accused Israel of keeping Palestinians away from the Pontiff during visits to holy sites in walled Old Jerusalem on Mar. 26.