Near the hilltop where Christian faithful believe Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, two robed Franciscan friars, one of them reading to Bush from the Gospels, escorted the president to a jetty on the Sea of Galilee.
Asked what it was like to be walking in Jesus's footsteps, Bush replied: "It's an amazing experience."
Wrapping up his first presidential visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, Bush was leaving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a forceful message of his own: "now is the time to make difficult choices".
He told them, in a challenge to scepticism deepened by the past seven years of violence and diplomatic impasse, that he believed Israel and the Palestinians would sign a peace treaty by the time he left office in January 2009.
Holding the hands of two nuns, a beaming Bush entered the Franciscan chapel on the Mount of Beatitudes, overlooking the ruins of Capernaum where Christians believe Jesus performed miracles, including walking on water in the Sea of Galilee.
The chapel features eight carved Latin beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, including the passage: "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God."
He also toured the ruins of an ancient synagogue at Capernaum, or Kfar Nahum in Hebrew, where tradition says Saint Peter lived.
HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
