Retired St. Max founder tours Holy Land

Monsignor Peter O'Reilly, the founding pastor of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church in Westlake Village, retired last June, but didn't wait long before packing his bags and making plans to travel afar.

O'Reilly moved to Pilgrim Place, a retirement community for Christian leaders in Claremont, and took a three-month sabbatical that landed him at the Tantur Institute in Israel.

The international group that attended the institute included Anglicans from England and New Zealand, a Baptist minister from North Carolina, a scholar from Romania and priests from India, England, Australia, Scotland and Ireland.

The institute offered lectures from the perspective of three great monotheistic faiths, O'Reilly said, referring to Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

"Each brought a dimension of the story of the land and its people that are simply not available to anyone who has to rush back to the bus in order to see one more historic or archaeological site," he said.

O'Reilly toured Galilee to witness the ongoing excavation of the town of Bethsaida, the site that is believed to be the birthplace of the apostles Peter and Andrew, and possibly James and John. O'Reilly had participated in an archaeological dig at Bethsaida in 1994.

Between lectures, O'Reilly traveled to Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula where he hiked the mountain where Moses is said to have accepted the Ten Commandments from God.

"I realized while there why Moses dropped the stone tablets," O'Reilly quipped. "If he was as tired as I was while climbing the mountain-all 7,000-plus feet to the summit- he had every reason to let the commandments slip from his grasp while on his way down."

O'Reilly also was able to visit family members in Ireland. He said it had been 44 years since he had spent Christmas with his family.