The Daily Mail is reporting that Pope Francis used the weekly Wednesday audience to stress that his trip to the Holy Land, Israel and the West Bank this weekend is "strictly religious" and intended to pray for peace in the war-torn region.

The  main purpose of the trip is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic 1964 meeting of Pope Paul VI and the Eastern Orthdox Patriarch Athenagroas in which the leaders lifted a mutual excommunication that had been in place for a millennium.

Pope Francis will meet with the current patriarch, Bartholomew I, on his last day of the trip.

The pope will make the trip accompanied by two friends from Argentina - Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic studies professor Omar Abboud.

The three-day visit will include meetings with Syrian and Palestinian refugees, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian leaders as well as the chief rabbis of Israel and the mufti of Jerusalem.

Francis comes to the region on good footing with Muslims who appreciated his opposition to plans by the West to go to war over Syria last fall. Instead, Francis called for a worldwide day of fasting, a move that won him praise in the Islamic world.

"In the Muslim street, the fact that he came out against Western intentions to invade a Middle Eastern Muslim nation, that is Syria, earned him a lot of political credibility," said John Allen, Vatican analyst for the Boston Globe.

In addition to praying for peace, he is expected to make an appeal for the end of the Christian exodus from the Middle East where the faithful are being driven out in record numbers.

"We will not be resigned to think about the Middle East without Christians," the pope said in November, lamenting the fact that they "suffer particularly from the consequences of the tensions and conflicts underway" in the region.

On the eve of the founding of the country of Israel in 1948, 10 percent of the region's population was Christian. That number has now dwindled to between two and three percent.

Church figures estimate the Christian population living in the West Bank to number about 38,000. Another 2,000 Christians live in Gaza, about 10,000 in Jerusalem and an estimated 160,000 in Israel.

The exodus from the area has much to do with tensions in the area as well as a declining birth rate among the Christian population.

The emigration of Christians is a major concern to local Church officials who are doing everything they can to stop it - from offering jobs to discounted housing.

The local church also offers 350 scholarships a year for mostly Christian university students and reserves two-thirds of those funds for those who commit to remaining in the Holy Land.

In addition, the Church has built apartments in places such as Ramallah, in the West Bank, and rented them to Christians at a discounted rate. Another 72 are being built for Christians in the Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem. Similar projects are currently underway in Bethlehem.

Click here to watch live coverage of the pope's trip to the Holy Land at EWTN!

The Assemblies of Catholic Ordinaries for the Holy Land has set up a special website dedicated to covering the pope's historic journey. Click here to visit the site.

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