In a whistle stop tour the mainstream media has tried to paint as the aimless ramblings of an old man, Pope John Paul has just done a very good impression of uniting massed Christian and Islamic forces against Judaism. Yes, that's right, the Crusades are on again, but this time the targets are Jews rather than Muslims!

          Before starting his controversial visit to Syria,  the Pope dropped in on the Greek Orthodox church in Athens to apologise for the sacking of Constantinople back in the 10th Century. At a single stroke, so to speak, this made reconciliation possible between the two largest Christian religious groupings on the face of the earth. Not "kiss and make up" time of course, but sufficient to open direct lines of communication between the two command headquarters in the future.

          This was no idle move. Though the Archbishop in Athens is regarded as the unofficial head of the Orthodox Christian Church,  the principle firepower of this religious group lies far to the north in Russia. Through an indirect and ingenious  process hardly befitting a "tired old man" (as the mainstream media described him last week),  the Pope was busily forming a paramilitary alliance between Europe and Russia, to the detriment of America and Israel.

          Mission complete, the Vatican Caravan moved on to Damascus, where the young Syrian President made a stirring welcoming speech in which he referred to the Jews as "Neo Colonists who would kill anyone in their path to achieve their aims." The Pope nodded sagely and made no effort to correct this seeming gaff by his host, choosing only to warn Israel that it must obey United Nations resolutions which state that Jewish settlements are illegal in international law.

          Then like the humblest of worshippers, the Pope removed his shoes to enter the Great Omayyad Mosque, and take a significant step towards healing centuries of conflict between Islam and Christianity.  The Pope, the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to enter a mosque, said that from now on Muslims and Christians should be seen as in "respectful dialogue, nevermore as communities in conflict".

He added: "For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and offer each other forgiveness."

          Many Muslims - some suspicious that the leader of the faith that drove the Crusaders to the Holy Land might try to reassert a Christian claim to the mosque - had hoped for an apology from the Pope for the sins of 1,000 years ago. But he made no apology, leaving the issue to God and individual consciences.

          The 80-year-old Pope had travelled to the mosque in his glass Popemobile through the ancient covered bazaar in the Old City - not far from the Street called Straight, where St Paul sought refuge after his conversion to Christianity.  He was greeted at the door by the Mufti, Sheikh Ahmed Kuftaro, and - after swapping his shoes for white sandals - was offered the traditional welcome of two tiny cups of coffee. The Mufti told Pope John Paul that it was a "great day for Muslims around the world".

          Together they walked leaning on sticks - the sheikh supported by his son and the Pope by his cardinals - to visit the domed shrine which is believed to hold the head of St John the Baptist, who is revered by Muslims as the Prophet Yahya.

The Pope stood in silent prayer at the shrine. A Syrian commentator said: "The Pope is silent. But his silence is more powerful than any words."

          The Omayyad Mosque, a place of worship for at least 3,000 years, was perhaps the only place in the world where such a gesture could have taken place. Once a temple to an ancient fertility goddess, it became a temple to Jupiter in Roman times and then the Christian basilica of St John.

          After the Muslim conquest, it was for a time shared between Islam and Christianity - "Muslims turning to the right to the mosque and Christians turning to the left to a church", according to the Pope's guide. In the eighth century it became exclusively a mosque.

          There had been plans for joint prayers, but in the end the Pope and the Mufti sat in the spacious courtyard and listened to an Islamic "invocation" of God chanted by a Muslim cleric. The hosts recalled that they were in Damascus, the capital of "steadfastness" and "Arabism" and the bastion against Israel. Three Syrian speakers took the opportunity to denounce Zionism for creating all the problems of the Middle East.

     The Syrian view, stated bluntly the day before by President Bashar Assad, is that if Christians and Muslims are to unite, it must be in the struggle against Israeli "oppression". It was a stark reminder that even the most spiritual moments cannot be separated from politics. But no one could fail to see that a watershed had been passed in relations between church and mosque.

          From Damascus the Pope then visited an Orthodox Church on the Golan Heights,  an everlasting symbol of savage Jewish behaviour in the Middle East. Though the church was not damaged in fighting during the 1967 war, the Jews thoroughly desecrated this Orthodox Christian shrine before returning it to the Syrians in 1974.

          To say that this trip was symbolic would be the understatement of the decade, but the Pope wasn't quite finished yet.  After waving goodbye to his host and boarding an Alitalia jet at Damascus,  he continued on to Malta for a flying visit to Combined Force Headquarters.