Lesson in Brotherly Love.(John Paul II in Syria)(Brief Article)

If sounding a note of hope is part of a pope's job, then John Paul II had four great days in Syria earlier this month. The young Syrian friends of my wife and me--Muslim and Christian--walk around with a warm glow of love and joy that they dare think might translate into a new hope of peace. Many here have faith that the pope's visit did exactly what they hoped it would: show the world who they really are. To be young and Syrian is to feel misrepresented by the media as a violent people breeding terrorists. As the pope followed in the footsteps of Saint Paul and reached out to people, some Syrians said, "This is the way I want to be seen--as a good neighbor."

When my wife, Hind, an Arab-born psychologist, came to Syria this year as a Fulbright Scholar to lecture at the University of Damascus and to do research on the world view of young Syrians, I accompanied her as a Roman Catholic, like her, eager to explore the cradle of Christianity. After wandering the safe streets of Syria at all hours of the day and night, we can testify that domestic peacefulness is a Syrian specialty.

The night the pope arrived, my wife and I had dinner in Damascus to watch his arrival on television with the same Syrian Arab Christian family with whom we had observed Good Friday. They belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, which is the largest of Syria's many Christian sects. (Ninety percent of Syria's Christians are either Greek Orthodox or, like my wife, Syrian Catholic.) The mother of this family, Rania, her husband, Souheil, a Damascus businessman, and their two sons, Omar, 15, and Fadi, 11, are not bound by the pope, as we are, but are bound, as all Christians are, by the commandments of Jesus to "love God with our whole hearts... and ...