AMASCUS, Syria, May 6 — Removing his shoes and donning white cloth slippers in respect for Islamic tradition, John Paul II today became the first pope ever to set foot in a mosque, making a bold bid to cut through centuries of divisions.

But at the Umayyad Mosque, and throughout his three-day visit to Syria, local leaders made even bolder efforts to press the Roman Catholic Church to make common cause against Judaism.

At the mosque, Muhammad Ziyadah, Syria's minister of religious affairs, said, "We must be fully aware of what the enemies of God and malicious Zionism conspire to commit against Christianity and Islam."

His speech echoed language used by President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday, when he met the pope and reviled those "who try to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ." The remarks infuriated officials in Israel and Jewish groups in the United States.

The friction punctuated the pope's six-day pilgrimage to Greece, Syria and Malta to retrace the steps of the Apostle Paul, who was moved to follow Christ on his way to Damascus.

Today in front of the mosque, in the old walled city of Damascus, the square was festooned with Vatican and Syrian flags. Security officers held back a small crowd of curious Muslims from a nearby souk craning for a look at the visitor from Rome.

After his secretary helped the pope remove his shoes to prepare to enter Muslim holy ground, the grand mufti of Syria, Sheik Ahmad Kuftaro, 86, sat beside the pope, who turns 81 this month, and in Arabic, the mufti recalled his two visits to the Vatican.

"I never imagined that we would meet again in one of our mosques," he said. "This is an occasion that goes beyond history and will begin the process of putting peace to work in the world."

The pope told him simply: "For me, too, it is a very important day. I am very happy."

As the two, both leaning on canes, made their way to the center of the mosque, Muslim clerics pressed prayer beads in John Paul's hands.

Afterward, the pope sat and listened silently to speeches that mixed hopeful calls of religious understanding with the fierce oratory of war that rules the Middle East.

Sheik Kuftaro urged the pope to "take a more active stand than mere prayer, supplication and good will." He asked his guest to "put pressure on Israel by every means to curb its atrocious aggression."

The pope responded in a different key. "It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding," he said, "so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence."

A translator who repeated his speech in Arabic was interrupted by the muezzin's sonorous call to evening prayer.

In his 23-year papacy, the pope has made his way through multiple wars and fierce political clashes. The Vatican has long lobbied for Palestinians' right to a homeland, at times clashing with Israel. But since his last trip to the region — he visited Israel and Palestinian terrorities in March of last year on another biblical pilgrimage — hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis have been dashed as fighting has resumed full force.

He came to Syria with his own agenda, but so far the Vatican has not shielded him from serving that of his hosts.

The pope had a personal religious goal here: he prayed, surrounded by cardinals, local Christian bishops and Muslim clerics, at the tomb where legend has it that the head of John the Baptist is buried.

The site, originally a pagan temple, was a Christian church until the 8th century, when it was taken over as a mosque by Arabs who captured Damascus in 636. Just outside the mosque compound is the tomb of Saladin, who led the Muslim armies that took Jerusalem from Crusaders in the 12th century.

On Monday the pope plans to deliver a prayer for peace at Quneitra, a city on the Golan Heights that was captured by Israel during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and destroyed just before the area was returned under a 1974 agreement. Syria has left it ruined as a museum of Israeli aggression.

Joaquín Navarro-Valls, the papal spokesman, described the site as "a fitting place to pray for peace."

Asked if the pope would grant Israeli requests that he challenge President Assad's remarks about Judaism, Dr. Navarro-Valls replied: "The pope will absolutely not intervene. The position of the Holy See regarding anti-Semitism is very clear and been repeated thousands of times by the pope himself."

Privately, some Vatican officials said they found the Syrian president's statements, echoed today by state-controlled television and newspapers, to be quite strong. A front- page editorial in Al Thawra called Israelis "enemies of God and faith."

But the officials noted that the tone was neither unexpected nor surprising. The Vatican usually exchanges drafts of texts with heads of state ahead of time, but Dr. Navarro-Valls said the Vatican did not see the actual wording before the speech was delivered. "We are guests of the president and he expressed his opinion," he said today. "I wouldn't call it strong; I would call it clear."

Dr. Assad's remarks before the pope were in line with denunciations he made at a meeting in March of Arab leaders in Jordan. He said then that in electing Ariel Sharon as prime minister, the Israelis had chosen a man who hated anything to do with Arabs and had dedicated his career to killing them.

"We say that the head of the government is a racist — it's a racist government, a racist army and security force," Dr. Assad said, adding by extension, "It is a racist society, and it is even more racist than the Nazis." He reiterated those remarks last week in Madrid, but it was his raising of religious hatred before the pope that drew the sharpest attention.

In Israel, his remarks were overshadowed by renewed fighting between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces.

Still, the comments gave the Israelis an opportunity to cast Dr. Assad as an unpredictable, inexperienced and combative leader. Even his father, President Hafez al-Assad, who died last June, "didn't express himself in such a careless, racist, illogical and anti-Semitic manner," the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, said today.