The Pope is due to visit Israel in May, along with 40,000 Christian pilgrims, to walk where Jesus is said to have walked, according to UPI. The trip was formally announced yesterday and details the Benedict's planned itinerary to visit Amman in Jordan, Nazareth and Jerusalem in Israel, and Bethlehem on the West Bank, according to The New York Times. Reuters says he will also pay a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

This trip comes on the coattails of tension between the Catholic Church and the Jews, only a month after the controversial re-instatement of Holocaust-denying bishop raised claims that the Pope may be anti-Semitic. 

The Pope told a crowd in St. Peter's Square that he would pray for "the precious gift of unity and peace in the Middle East and for all of humanity."

Israeli President Shimon Peres is welcoming the pontiff's visit to Israel from May 8-15, saying, "His visit is an important and exciting event that brings the spirit of peace and hope." Ha'aretz also reported Peres calling Benedict "an honored and welcomed guest of all the people."

This will be the second time a pope has visited Israel, with the first being Pope John Paul II in Jubilee Year 2000. At the time, John Paul prayed at the Western Wall for God's forgiveness of Christian's offenses against Jews throughout history.

The Pope: An ancient prayer is causing modern controversy A few years ago he pissed off Muslims around the world when he suggested that Islam was a religion of the sword. Today, Pope Benedict XVI has enraged the rest of the monotheistic family.

In a move that must have given both Ann Coulter and Mel Gibson hard-ons, the Pope has re-sanctioned an ancient Good Friday prayer which calls on God to illuminate the hearts of the Jews that they might recognize their savior Jesus Christ. To his credit, the Pope did choose to remove passages from the ancient Latin rite which referred to Jewish "blindness" and the need to "remove the veil from their hearts."

To the surprise of nobody, Jewish groups have got their knickers in a twist. The Italian Rabbinical Assembly has suspended its decades-long dialogue with the Church. And the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement which read:

"While we appreciate that some of the deprecatory language has been removed ... we are deeply troubled and disappointed that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord was kept intact."

Walter Kasper, the Cardinal in charge of the Catholic Church's relations with Jews, has vigorously defended the Pope's decision. Kasper (who happens to be German) is perplexed by Jewish touchiness:

"I must say that I don't understand why Jews cannot accept that we can make use of our freedom to formulate our prayers. We think that reasonably this prayer cannot be an obstacle to dialogue because it reflects the faith of the Church and, furthermore, Jews have prayers in their liturgical texts that we Catholics don't like."

To those of us less naive about Jewish sensitivities, it is obvious that reintroducing this prayer into the liturgy would reopen old wounds. It harkens us back to a time when Christians looked at Jews the way Tom Cruise looks at a car accident.

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The Catholic Church has just reached an important milestone: the first-ever animated video of the life of a Pope.  That's right -- never before has a Pope been made into a cartoon, not even Pope Hilarious.

Watch the BBC clip, in which the announcer muses that the church needs to do whatever it can to appeal to young people.  Sounds familiar, no?  Maybe it's not a coincidence that the animation looks so much like that of the greatest Jewish cartoon ever made.