The crisis in the Middle East continues to worsen, as either side cannot agree on how to approach the dilemma. The pope, head of the Catholic Church and one of the most well known Christian leaders, has made a symbolic gesture for peace in the region.

Pope Francis is hosting the leaders of both Israel and Palestine at the Vatican today, June 8, for a peace prayer meeting. The AFP reported that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas prayed together with the pope in a gesture of peace that the pope knows is more symbolic than effective.

"Nobody is fooling themselves that peace will break out in the Holy Land," said Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the head of the Franciscan Order in the Middle East who organized the historic event in the Vatican Gardens. "But this time to stop and breathe has been absent for some time."

"The pope wants to look beyond, upwards," Pizzaballa said. "Not everything is decided by politics."

In the ceremony, the leaders gathered and prayed together, reciting the prayers in chronological order of the world's monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to AFP, the group prayed in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Italian and will be accompanied by musical interludes.

Representing the other faiths were friends of the pope from Buenos Aires: Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Muslim professor Omar Abboud. Later after the prayers, the three leaders will make an invocation for peace and then will plant an olive tree in a symbolic gesture of peace.

While the pope brings together leaders from the conflicted Middle East, he has also made overtures towards his Eastern Orthodox colleagues. According to the Daily Beast, Pope Francis held a meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew I. Following the meeting, the Eastern Orthodox patriarch announced that he and Pope Francis had agreed that they or their successors would reconvene in Nicaea in 2025.

Almost 2,000 years ago, the leaders of the Christian church met in that same city and attempted to consolidate the beliefs and teachings of the new Christian church. According to the Daily Beast, the pope has arranged for this meeting so that its unavoidable for his successor, and it shows that Francis is more worried about the Church's leadership rather than the morality of lay people.