The Associated Press reports that Pope Francis praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an "angel of peace" during a meeting today at the Vatican.
During a traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis presented Abbas with a medallion that it represented the "angel of peace destroying the bad spirit of war." Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since "you are an angel of peace."
During his 2014 visit to Israel and the West Bank, Francis had called both Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres men of peace.
Abbas is in Rome for the canonization Sunday of two 19th-century nuns from what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. In a statement Saturday, he praised the two new saints as inspirational models for today's Palestinians and urged Christians like them to remain in the region:
We call on Palestinian Christians to stay with us and enjoy the rights of full and equal citizenship, and bear with us the difficulties of life until we achieve liberty, sovereignty and human dignity.
His visit comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty that officially recognized the "state of Palestine." The Vatican expressed "great satisfaction" over the new treaty and the hope that "Israelis and Palestinians may take with determination courageous decisions to promote peace," adding that interreligious dialogue was necessary to combat terrorism.
UPDATE: As J.E. Dyer reports at Liberty Unyielding, the truth about the Pope's comment that Abbas "is" an "angel of peace" may have been lost in translation from the Italian:
He did utter the words “angel of peace,” and he suggested that Abbas could or might be one. In the context of the pope’s complete statement about the meeting, the implication was that Abbas could be an angel of peace if he resumed direct negotiations with Israel [emphasis added]...
To summarize, then: Pope Francis had previously commended both Abbas and Peres as “men of peace,” presumably intending papal encouragement for the pursuit of peace. At the meeting with Abbas on Saturday, the pope gave Abbas a medallion with the image of the Angel of Peace, and commented that Abbas might be, or would have the chance to be, an angel of peace. He did not say that Abbas is an angel of peace...
A more exact translation of the idea in English would be something like “may it be that you become an angel of peace,” or “let it be that you become an angel of peace.”
Dyer also notes that an acquaintance sent her further information which suggests that, as the acquaintance put it, "There’s a sense in which the Pope did the exact opposite of what the NYT and AFP reported: he urged Abbas to change his way.”
Read the entire piece here. "
