Pope preaches tolerance

By Philip Pullella and Tom Heneghan

MOUNT NEBO, Jordan (Reuters) - Pope Benedict retraced the steps of Moses on Saturday, visiting the mountain where the Bible says the ancient prophet glimpsed the Promised Land before dying, and preached that religion helps man search for truth.

From the top of Mount Nebo, the 82-year-old pontiff gazed out over the Jordan River to Jericho and the hills of Jerusalem, with the Dead Sea lost in a haze to the left of the panorama.

"Like Moses, we too have been called by name, invited to undertake a daily exodus from sin and slavery towards life and freedom," he said in the sixth-century Moses Memorial Church.

"His example reminds us that we too are part of the ageless pilgrimage of God's people through history."

Benedict's visit, billed as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, is also a highly political tour of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories aiming to balance Vatican relations with Jews and Arabs and repair his image in the Muslim world.

He was due to visit a mosque in Amman later on Saturday and address Muslim leaders there, giving him an opportunity to recast his stand on Islam after angering Muslims in 2006 by implying their religion was violent and unreasonable.

That speech, the Regensburg lecture, has cast such a long shadow that Jordanian Islamist leaders called for his visit to be cancelled.

Benedict gave a foretaste of his speech in remarks at Madaba, a town near Mount Nebo, when he blessed the cornerstone of a new Catholic university being built there with help from Jordan, a Muslim country keen to maintain interfaith harmony.