The Pope in the Middle East

Well, for those few who read my blog...and are unaware, I just wanted to take a brief moment this evening and write up something a wee bit more serious that the disjunction of the week, which would be to briefly comment that our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, is currently on his pilgrimage in the Middle East. Since Pope Paul VI took his landmark, history-making pilgrimage there after the Second Vatican Council, this trip has become something of a Pontificate tradition. Unfortunately, the Middle East remains a place of bitter hatred and controversy, and the Holy Father's trip has is not without a certain level of security risk to it. Thus, I would only urge all of us, as he himself has done, to pray, not only for his safety and the safety of all those involved, but also for there to be some true spiritual progress made by this pilgrimage in the direction of greater peace and concord between the Middle East and the West, between Islam and Christianity.