President Shimon Peres today (Tuesday, 4 December 2012), welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to Twitter with a special Tweet which read; "Your holiness, welcome to Twitter. Our relations with the Vatican are at their best and can form a basis to further peace everywhere"
President Peres to the new Papal Nuncio Guiseppe Lazzarotto:
"Religion has a spiritual impact upon people, which is no less important than material strength. It is peace that we need more than anything else, peace in faith and peace in our daily lives."
President Peres met this morning with the new Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto at a formal ceremony at the President's Residence in Jerusalem in which five new ambassadors, amongst them Archbishop Lazzarotto, presented their Letters of Credence to President Peres. President Peres congratulated Archbishop Lazzarotto on his position and said, "I have the highest regard for His Holiness and I was glad to see that he started to Tweet. Today we have the best relationship between Israel and the Holy See in the last 2000 thousand years. That is the main story and I hope those relations will continue to improve. We feel that the relationship now is deeper and wider than ever before, a relationship that looks to the future.
President Peres added that in Israel, "There is an attempt by the heads of the three religions to make peace, peace amongst the people not just the governments. It's a great contribution because religion has a spiritual impact upon people, which is no less important than material strength. It is peace that we need more than anything else, peace in faith and peace in our daily lives."
Archbishop Lazzarotto said to President Peres "I have the pleasure and honor to convey to your Excellency cordial greetings from His Holiness Pope Benedict. He sends cordial greetings to you and through you to the people of Israel. The important thing is to have goodwill and look for what we have in common, what unites us and always find a common way to walk together. We should work together for peace, for good understanding and for dialogue."
