Pictures of Pope Benedict XVI presiding over Evening Prayer last May 9 at the Melkite Catholic cathedral in Amman, Jordan, have now been posted at the Vatican website along with some other pictures from his recent visit to the Holy Land. (The Evening Prayer celebrated in the Melkite Cathedral was a shortened and modified version of Byzantine Vespers, with a Maronite song and Roman Ordinary-Form style prayers of the faithful and a "prayer of consecration" inserted, apparently at the request of the Vatican. The text of the service can be found in pp. 29 - 55 of the missal for the Pope's visit to the Holy Land. Warning: the English translation is apparently incomplete and faulty.)
Noteworthy are the pictures of the Pope blessing with trikirion and dikirion and carrying the Byzantine episcopal staff (with the upper half covered with a cloth embroidered with the coat of arms of Gregorios III (Laham), Melkite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.)
