Pope John Poul (I offered a new job yesterday to the controversial Greek Catholic Bishop Hilarion Capucci at a private audience during which his “unauthorized” attendance at a Palestinian National Council meeting in Damascus was not raised. Capucci was released by Israel after serving 39 months of a 12-year jail sentence for gun-running for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
He was freed in 1977 after intercession by Pope Paul VI on condition he never return to the Middle East. Capucci was assigned to a post in Latin America but suddenly turned up at the Damascus meeting, causing Israeli protests and a statement by the Vatican that his trip there was “unauthorized.” He had been waiting in Rome for a month for his audience with the new Pope.
Capucci, the former Melchite Bishop of Jerusalem, will now administer to Melchite groups in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Switzerland, the Vatican said after the audience. With Capucci at the audience was Patriarch Maximos V Hakim of Antioch.
Asked if Capucci’s attendance at the Palestinian talks had been raised during the Papal audience, Maximos said “No, it was not discussed. That is water under the bridge. It is all over.” He added “In any case, no one can stop (Capucci) loving the Palestinian people. This is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the Catholic Church.”
Maximos said that many subjects were discussed at the meeting with the Pope, including Lebanon, Jerusalem and “the forces for peace in the Middle East.” He did not elaborate beyond saying, “I repeated my opinion that there can never be a lasting peace in the area without a solution being found to the problem of the Palestinian people.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
