It was an unusual appearance. Benedict XVI arrived in the back of the papal plane just after it took off for the return trip to Italy. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi introduced him with a smile, calling this "the longest, most complicated and maybe most tiring" of the Pontiff's 12 foreign voyages. Benedict, his face toasty bronze from a week of public appearances under consistently sunny skies, repeated his call to seek signs of hope in an otherwise bleak Middle East landscape. Having just come from deep prayer at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus' death and resurrection, he also passionately urged people of all faiths to make religious pilgrimages.
The press tends to gauge papal trips on more concrete terms. (It's hard to confirm, for example, whether the Pope's prayers are answered.) On the way to board the papal plane, I began a quick — and necessarily insufficient — "grading" of Benedict's trip. There was not a vast range of marks, with the Italian press generally being more positive, a German reporter giving the Pontiff a C-minus for his much criticized remarks at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem), and one veteran concluding that John Paul would have been much more inspiring at these events. (See pictures of the Pope's visit to the Holy Land.)
Two veteran American news-wire reporters were making their umpteenth papal trips. Victor Simpson of the Associated Press took his first in 1979; Phil Pullella of Reuters made his maiden voyage in 1982. We won't report who gave which mark, but one gave a B "'cause he made the trip in the first place," the other a C-plus "for missed opportunities."
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