Pope asks Jews for forgiveness at Wailing Wall

The Pope made the largest gesture of reconciliation offered by the Catholic Church to Judaism by going to Jerusalem's Western (wailing) Wall yesterday and placing a note asking forgiveness for persecution of the Jews.

It came on the final day of his Holy Land mission, hammering home his message that hostility between the two faiths should now end.

Last night the pontiff flew back to Rome, having completed his odyssey without disruption from the feuding that erupted in his wake, including a striking moment in which the Pope's crimson-sashed prelates arrived at an Islamic holy site to be greeted by Palestinian cries of "Go home, homos".

Just as during his earlier visit to Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem, the Pope did not categorically apologise at the Western Wall for his church's conduct, or the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. But the sight of the Pope sitting at the wall and then taking at least 90 shuffling steps - stick in hand - up to the shrine was momentous. His note said: "We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."

It was a dignified moment, which is more than can be said for some side-shows that followed the Vatican's band-wagon as it travelled through Jerusalem's Old City, ending at a Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The visit has been a massive public-relations exercise for all involved. The Pope, the Catholic Church's chief recruiting officer, secured a week of saturation television coverage. The Israelis basked in the spectacle of him bringing an olive branch and the Palestinians hosted a pope who advertised his sympathy for their aspirations.

It should have been a triumph all round, yet some managed to blow it. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, the city's most senior Islamic cleric, yesterday accused Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust's six million death-toll, a view unlikely to do much to advance the Palestinian cause.