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Pope's 20 years marked by strides in interfaith relations
RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
ROME - Pope John Paul II marks the 20th anniversary of his election as pope today (Oct. 16). His papacy has revolutionized relations between Roman Catholics and Jews.
With milestones such as the first papal visit to a synagogue and the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See, John Paul has instituted an official Catholic opening to Jews, their sensitivities and causes unprecedented in 2,000 years of church history.
"John Paul has placed those relationships squarely in the mainstream of Catholic teaching, preaching, liturgy - indeed, in all forms of church life," said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious relations for the American Jewish Committee.
The process has not been without serious stumbling blocks, particularly regarding the Vatican's handling of some issues stemming from the Catholic Church's actions during the Holocaust. "Whenever we get to the core issues around the Shoah, things get much more complicated," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The beatification earlier this month of Croatia's wartime Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, accused by critics of collaborating with the fascists, is one example. Beatification, the last step before sainthood, appeared hardly appropriate for Stepinac. Beatifying Stepinac, said Cooper, "on whose watch the murder of innocent Serbs, Jews and Gypsies took place, is an outrage."
A separate ceremony this week, in which sainthood was conferred on Edith Stein - a Carmelite nun killed at Au-schwitz who was born a Jew and converted to Catholicism - also strained some Jewish sensibilities. (See story on this page.) Another example is a controversial Vatican document on the Shoah released in March. Although the document expressed repentance for individual Catholic failings during the Shoah, it absolved the Church itself from any responsibility and strongly defended wartime Pope Pius XII against criticism of his silence in the face of the Holocaust.
The Jewish world also was outraged when John Paul paid honor to former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, despite evidence of Waldheim's having lied about his Nazi past. Further straining Jewish-Catholic relations was a bitter conflict in the late 1980s and early 1990s over the establishment of a Carmelite convent in a building adjacent to the site of the Auschwitz death camp. And although the Vatican established full diplomatic relations with Israel in late 1993, the status of Jerusalem, which the Vatican wants to see put under international mandate, also creates problems.
Nonetheless, the strides in improving Jewish-Catholic relations under John Paul's papacy have been enormous. Official sanction of full-scale Catholic-Jewish dialogue only dates back to 1965, when the Second Vatican Council issued "Nostra Aetate" - or "In Our Times" - a declaration that repudiated the concept of Jewish guilt for Jesus' death and called for mutual respect and dialogue between Catholics and Jews. From the beginning of his papacy, John Paul made the bettering of relations with the Jewish world - and the condemnation of anti-Semitism - cornerstones of his policy. He himself lived through the horrors of the Nazi occupation of his native Poland and saw firsthand the effects of the Holocaust and of postwar Communist anti-Semitism.
John Paul has spoken out strongly against anti-Semitism on numerous occasions, and he has taken a number of other significant, highly publicized actions to demonstrate his regard for the Jewish world. In 1979, he paid homage at Auschwitz to the victims of Nazism. In 1987, he visited the main synagogue in Rome, where he embraced Rome's chief rabbi and referred to Jews as Christianity's "older brothers."
Throughout his papacy, he has held numerous meetings with Jewish communities in various countries and has met with numerous Jewish delegations at the Vatican. He also has sponsored events such as a symposium at the Vatican in 1997 to discuss Christian roots of anti-Semitism.
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