A key Vatican official suggested that a controversial prayer for the conversion of Jews could be dropped from the reintroduced Latin-language rite. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state at the Vatican and the most senior official after Pope Benedict XVI, said at a news conference that “we could simply study” the possibility of substituting the prayer. He had been asked about the pope’s recent decree allowing a wider use of the old Latin prayerbook that was phased out after the reforms of the so-called Second Vatican Council. The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that it was pleased the Vatican was listening to its concerns. “We hope that Cardinal Bertone’s public conjectures will shortly result in putting Catholic-Jewish relations back to the positive mode we were in before all this,†National Director Abraham Foxman said.
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