The pontiff's posse: millions of tourists

The last papal visit, by Pope John Paul II in March 2000, boosted the number of tourists to Israel that year to 2.7 million. But the intifada, which broke out that September, turned the last quarter of 2000 into a tourism disaster, so the number of tourists never reached the anticipated 3 to 4 million.

Israel invested significant amounts of money in infrastructure for the last papal visit, including more than NIS 10 million in Jerusalem and NIS 12 million at the Mount of the Beatitudes in the Galilee, where John Paul II conducted a public mass.

Another 1.8 million was spent in Nazareth, on projects such as construction of a helicopter pad for the pope's chopper and a huge parking lot for the buses full of pilgrims.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims accompanied the pope, filling hotels in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well as bed-and-breakfasts in the north. These included some 43,000 priests who came to attend the papal mass overlooking Lake Kinneret. In fact, there were not enough hotel rooms in the north to accommodate all the visitors, so some 7,000 priests wound up sleeping in tents by the lake shore.

In 1964, Pope Paul VI made an unofficial trip to Israel.