Pope Francis is to host on Sunday an unprecedented peace prayer meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The prayer is a symbolic gesture to foster dialogue but is unlikely to have any immediate effect.
Peres is set to arrive at the Vatican on Sunday afternoon and will be followed shortly later by Abbas, with Francis welcoming them outside St. Martha's Residence where he lives in the Vatican.
They will then go together to the Vatican Gardens, where the prayers will be recited in chronological order of the world's three main monotheistic religions, starting with Judaism, followed by Christianity and then Islam.
The prayers from each of the three delegations will focus on three themes: "creation", "invocation for forgiveness" and "invocation for peace", the Vatican said.
They will be read out in Arabic, English, Hebrew and Italian and will be accompanied by musical interludes.
The invitation for this unusual meeting was extended by Pope Francis after his open-air mass in Bethlehem during his first visit as Pope to the Holy Land two weeks ago. "In this birthplace of the prince of peace, I wish to invite you, President Mahmoud Abbas, together with President Shimon Peres, to join me in prayer to God for the gift of peace," the pope then said. "I offer my home in the Vatican as a place for this encounter of prayer,’’ he added.
But the pontiff has been realistic about the prospects of his initiative, saying it would be "crazy" to expect any Vatican mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian Authority conflict but adding that just praying together might help in some way.
In a tweet from the pope's account on Saturday, Francis said, "Prayer is all-powerful. Let us use it to bring peace to the Middle East and peace to the world."
Israel broke off peace talks with the Palestinians last month after Palestinian President Abbas signed a reconciliation deal with one of Israel's bitter enemies, the Hamas Islamist movement, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the violent takeover in 2007.
Last Monday, the Palestinian president swore in a new interim government as part of the recent deal. While the EU and the US welcomed the development, Israel rejected the government, saying it is backed by Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.