Olmert confirms Pope Benedict to visit Israel in May

Pope Benedict will visit Israel in May, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday, confirming the spring pilgrimage and avoiding any mention of tense Catholic-Jewish relations over a Holocaust-denying bishop.

"This May, we will receive a special visitor, Pope Benedict XVI," Olmert told his cabinet, without giving an exact date. "President Shimon Peres will accompany him to various sites in Israel."

Olmert said he will ask the government to appoint Vice Premier Haim Ramon to be responsible for organizing the visit, and PMO Director-General Ra'anan Dinur to chair an inter-ministerial team to coordinate preparations for the visit.

"Naturally, we very much hope that the visit will be held in an appropriate atmosphere and will be as successful as Pope John Paul II's was," said Olmert. "A Papal visit to the Holy Land is always an exceptionally significant event and we hope that it will be this time as well."

Benedict confirmed on Thursday he would go to Israel, and Vatican sources said the trip, the first by a pope to the Holy Land since John Paul visited in 2000, was expected in May.

Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely tense since Jan. 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in 1988 when they were ordained without Vatican permission.

One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers.

The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so far has not done so, saying he needs more time to review the evidence.

Faced with Jewish anger over Williamson's remarks on the Holocaust, the pope said during a meeting with American Jewish leaders on Thursday that "any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable."

A detailed itinerary of the pope's visit is not yet available.

It would be the third visit of a reigning pontiff to Israel since the state was created in 1948.

Pope Paul VI made a one-day stopover from Jordan in 1964, but since the Vatican and Israel did not yet have diplomatic relations, he avoided any statement or act that could be interpreted as even indirect recognition of the Jewish state.

In March 2000, Pope John Paul II made a five-day pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories, during which he visited Christian and Jewish holy sites.