Pope John Paul today urged Arabs and Jews to be "merciful and forgiving seekers of peace", while visiting one of the Holy Land's most bitterly contested zones in Syria.
He included in his prayers the killing of a four-month-old Palestinian baby girl by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip, saying: "Mindful of the sad news of conflict and death which even today arrived from Gaza, our prayer becomes even more intense."
With a stiff wind bending the olive trees of the Golan Heights ghost town of Quneitra, and Israeli military positions in the distance, the backdrop of symbols of both peace and war seemed eerily apt for the aging Pontiff's appeal.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God," he said, resting wearily on a kneeler in Quneitra's ruined Greek Orthodox Church of Our Lady.
The appeal, made more poignant and pressing by his trembling voice, was made on a visit to Syria in which he had already made history by becoming the first Pontiff to enter a mosque.
The church from which the 80-year-old Pope spoke was destroyed in 1974, like the rest of the town, by withdrawing Israeli forces who had captured it seven years earlier.
Syria has left the town as a macabre memorial to what it calls Israeli atrocities, and urges tourists to visit it.
Around the Pope, bulldozed houses, demolished hospitals, shell-scarred churches and gutted mosques stood as reminders of the bitter conflict between Israel and Syria. A narrow wooden catwalk was built to help him negotiate the broken paving.
"From this place, so disfigured by war, I wish to raise my voice in prayer for peace in the Holy Land and the world," the Pope said.
"Genuine peace is a gift from God. Our openness to that gift requires a conversion of heart and a conscience obedient to his law."
From Quneitra, the Pope could see Israeli military positions and radar posts on the other side of the Western Golan, which Israel captured in the Six Day War of 1967 and still occupies.
The Pontiff has made war and peace in the region a crucial theme of his pilgrimage to Syria to retrace the steps of St. Paul, who converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus.
The Pope, is due to leave Syria for Malta tomorrow.