(13:00) Pope: Let's heal the wounds of the past

"We must be determined to heal the wounds of the past so that they will never open again," Pope John Paul II declared at a moving ceremony where he was received at Beit Hanassi by Israel's president, Ezer Weizman. "My visit is a pledge that the Catholic Church will do everything possible to prove this is not a dream but a reality."

The pope was speaking to 150 cabinet ministers, foreign diplomats, clergymen and dignitaries invited by the president to meet the pontiff.

The pope appeared to wipe a tear as he listened to the Hebrew song, "From the heights of Mt Scopus," and asked to meet singer Yehoram Gaon.

"There is a question whether men make history or history makes men," Weizman told the pope. "You have made history."

Earlier, Weizman and the pontiff conversed tete-a-tete.