Pates, other bishops head to Israel to promote peace

The very place that Bishop Richard Pates described as a “bonfire of violence” earlier this summer is now exactly where he is headed to show “there is one God who wants goodness for all.”

Eighteen Catholic bishops from across the United States leave on a 10-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land this week to pray for peace with political and religious leaders from that fractious region’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

Pates, who leads the Diocese of Des Moines, will precede his departure with a local prayer service at 3 p.m. on Sunday at St. Ambrose Cathedral. Then it’s on to holy sites in Jerusalem, Galilee, Nazareth and Bethlehem.

While the prospects of peace in the Middle East may have been “talked to death,” said Pates, his travels during the last three years as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace have taught him ever more persistent lessons of hope.

The primary messages of his coming trip are these: Prayer is powerful. Peace is possible. And a two-state solution for the area is in the best interest of all.

“Most Palestinians and Israelis want to move on with there lives,” said Pates, who is embarking on his third visit to the Holy Land in the past three years. “There’s blame on both sides, but it’s time to move forward. In the aftermath of war there is a weariness that psychologically builds a desire for peace. We are traveling as people of faith and don’t necessarily go with the political objectives that might motivate elsewhere. We believe in the intercession of God, and we don’t bring a posture of ‘what has been wrong’ but one of ‘what can be.’ ”

Pates began planning for his trip about a year ago, when the Holy Land was stable enough to be viewed as much by Americans as a museum-like tourist destination than as an age-old clash of cultures.

Now a tenuous cease-fire hangs in the balance after a summer of fighting between Israel and the Hamas government. Pates “bonfire” comment came in July in letters issued to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and members of Congress.

He described the kidnappings and murders of three Israeli youths, the subsequent arrests of hundreds of Palestinians, and then the kidnapping of a Palestinian youth who was burned alive.

Add to that what Pates called the “sadistic goals” of the Islamic State in nearby Iraq and several beheadings that have emphasized its march across that nation.

Despite it all, Pates swears he has looked into the eyes of countless people on all sides of the Jewish/Muslim divide who believe peace can happen.

“There is a much higher desire for peace than what you might get from the statements issued by government,” Pates said. “A lot of people live according to a caricature because extremists have developed them to brainwash people, but there are a lot of young, educated, prominent leaders who desire to move less by military might than by friendship. It’s a constant refrain on both sides to pull back the curtain and let people throughout the world know that they are trying to achieve the same things. They have a sense that co-existence can be a reality, that it is the truth and that it will prevail.”

Prayers at Sunday’s service at St. Ambrose in downtown Des Moines will seek for that spirit to grow not only in the Middle East, but in other strife-filled hotbeds such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in Central America; South Sudan and the Central African Republic in Africa; and in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Getting more and more Americans to believe in the possibility of peace across the globe will give U.S. leaders more leverage to pursue it effectively, Pates said. He himself has globe-trotted to Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Iraq along with Israel and Palestinian lands as part of his U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee chairmanship duties that end in November.

Joseph Kurtz, the archbishop of Louisville and current president of the bishops conference, said he was “delighted” in the work of Pates and his fellow bishops to follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis’ May trip to the Holy Land because “prayer brings hope, and hope enables people to imagine and grasp a different future.”

Pates said he was powerfully convinced of a better future while walking a poverty-laden street in South Sudan. Seemingly out of nowhere, he came across a tent filled with immaculately dressed women singing “Alleluia, the Lord is good to us.” It’s a memory he will take with him when his plane lands in Israel on Wednesday.

“We believe victory is the final note we are going to play,” Pates said. “Those women were in the midst of absolutely disparaging conditions, but you could not help but be impressed and energized by their spirit. That spirit cannot be contained.”