When people think of the papacy, they often envisage St Peter’s Basilica, the vast halls of the Vatican and centuries of European dominance in the Church’s highest office. Few, however, remember that the papacy did not begin in Rome – it began in Palestine.
The first Pope, St Peter, was a Palestinian Jew: a fisherman from Galilee who answered Christ’s call. His faith was shaped by the land where Jesus walked, where the Beatitudes were first spoken and where the Church itself took root. Yet today, as Christianity struggles to survive in its birthplace, the absence of a modern Palestinian or Middle Eastern Pope raises a question, rarely asked. Could it ever happen again? And if it did, and there was another Palestinian pope, what would it mean?
