Pope Benedict XVI is planning to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2009, the Vatican has confirmed.

According to Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, “Contacts are being made at a diplomatic level on a possible journey of the Pope to the Holy Land in the course of 2009.”

Other Church sources say a papal visit is being considered for the second week of May.

News of the trip, first leaked yesterday to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, comes amid recent tensions between Israel and the Vatican, most notably renewed accusations by some Jewish and Israeli leaders that Pope Pius XII did too little to save Jews during World War Two.

Others have dismissed those claims as completely unfounded historically.

The Pope is understood to be concerned about these tensions and consequently is prepared to travel to the Holy Land partly to prevent them from worsening. For some time, he has expressed a desire to travel to the Holy Land, but it was thought he would wait until the region was more stable.

Considerable political sensitivity would surround the visit. For this reason, as with the Holy Father’s trip to Turkey in 2007, the Vatican is likely to emphasize that the papal visit will be a strictly religious journey — a pilgrimage more than a state visit. Meetings with political leaders would therefore be kept to a minimum.

According to the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore, the trip will also be short: just two days, visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Italian paper also says he will not be travelling to Gaza, which is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas.

Benedict would be only the third Pope to have visited the Holy Land in modern times. Pope Paul VI visited the Holy Land in 1964, and Pope John Paul II traveled to the region in 2000, visiting Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

John Paul also visited Syria a year later.

— Edward Pentin