We last pictured James Buchanan with quite an armful of prayers. Over the summer, the director for the Edward B. Brueggeman Center for Dialogue, along with Rabbi Abie Ingber and former Department of Theology chair Bill Madges, traveled to Israel to personally deliver these and more than 31,000 others to the Western Wall.

The prayer cards came from the exhibit, “A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People, which opened at Xavier in 2005 and has since traveled to various universities and museums across the country. Chronicling the late pope’s life, the exhibit includes a replica of the Western Wall. Visitors are encouraged to write a prayer and place it in the wall, emulating the pope during his

historic visit to Israel.

The prayers brought to the actual Wall in July were from visitors who saw the exhibit in Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, Rapid City, Iowa, Kansas City, Philadelphia, St. Petersburg, Fla., and Los Angeles. Nearly 4,000 prayers were placed into the Wall by hand. The rest were placed in the Western Wall tunnels at a spot close to the Temple of Jerusalem.