Pope's staff at BYU's Jerusalem Center

Five people in Pope Benedict XVI's traveling party are staying at Brigham Young University's Jerusalem Center while His Holiness is in the Holy Land this week.

"We're cooperating with them so that they're close by to where he is staying, and they're available to him and can easily travel with him wherever he goes," said S. Kent Brown, BYU Jerusalem Center assistant director.

Brown, who has previously served as the center's director, said leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have maintained a good relationship with Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel — or the papl ambassador to Israel — whose official residence is next door to the center.

"We've had a long-standing relationship with him and his predecessors," Brown said.
 
Daniel C. Peterson, who taught at the center for a year and was on the Jerusalem academic coordinating committee at BYU for many years, said he can't remember a time when dignitaries have stayed at the center, though visiting professors from other universities have stayed there previously.

"Because of its proximity to the Nuncio's residence, it's very convenient for them to stay there," Peterson said.

Franco approached center directors to see if some of the pope's traveling party could stay at the BYU-run facility, "and of course we said 'yes,'" Brown said.

Initially, center personnel thought they might be housing cardinals, but the people staying at the center are administrative support staff.

"They're people who travel with him and who help keep his schedule and those kinds of things," Brown said, adding they sleep at the center and have breakfast there.

"It's not a really big offering to them, but at least it allows them a place to stay, a place to land. And they can spend the rest of their day helping the pope meet his schedule."

The rooms they are staying in are not in the student area but an area where students were housed in years past.

There are currently 79 students staying at the center, Brown said.

Built in the late 1980s, the Jerusalem Center is a satellite campus of BYU, with students studying and staying there in four-month increments throughout the year.

Violence in previous years caused the center to close its doors out of safety concerns in 2000, but it reopened in 2006 and has been operating at about half-capacity since.

During his stay in Jerusalem, the pope has visited sites with religious significance to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, including praying at the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.

E-mail: mfarmer@desnews.com