Pope John Paul II and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat “have exchanged several letters during the past year,” the National Catholic News Service reported from Rome.
According to the report, published on Dec. 13, Father Ibrahim Ayad, a Catholic priest who is one of Arafat’s advisors, told a press conference at Rome’s Cultural Center for Religious Information on Dec. II that “the Pope’s last letter, dated four months ago, spoke of ‘Palestinian rights’ and of the difficulties of the situation in southern Lebanon.”
The report said that “Father Ayad, a priest of the Latin Rite of Jerusalem who advises the PLO leader on international and religious problems, said he had several meetings at the Vatican Secretariat of State in the months following Arafat’s receipt of the letter. He noted that the Holy See did not yet see its way clear to granting Arafat a Papal audience. The Bethlehem-born priest added that the PLO, too, would prefer to wait on concrete Papal action in favor of the Palestinian cause in the wake of Pope John Paul’s call at the United Nations for their ‘legitimate rights’.”
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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.
