The mother superior of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz says she will not move into the new convent complex being built a short distance away from the site of the notorious Nazi death camp.
Sister Marie-Therese, apparently upset about the way she feels she was treated during the course of the controversy around the Auschwitz convent, plans to move to another location instead.
The Vatican does not expect her reticence to be an obstacle to the rest of the nuns moving to their new quarters by the end of the year, according to communications it has had with the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, or IJCIC, the group representing world Jewry in dialogue with other church bodies.
IJCIC Chairman Edgar Bronfman has discussed the matter with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews.
Cassidy told him that plans are going ahead as scheduled with the new convent, according to Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, of which Bronfman is president.
“There is no problem at this time,” said Israel Singer, the WJC’s secretary- general.
Assurances have also come from the head of the Polish Episcopate’s Commission on Relations With the Jews, Bishop Henryk Muszynski.
The Catholic prelate told Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, that he was not surprised that the Carmelite mother superior had refused to move.
According to Klenicki, who met with Muszynski during a visit to Poland last month, the bishop said “the sister or sisters can refuse to go to the new place,” but all of the nuns will abandon the present premises.
Sister Marie-Therese is free to go wherever she wants, said the bishop.
“Other sisters will take her place and spiritual commitment in the new building outside the former concentration camp,” he reportedly told the ADL rabbi.
The new convent, which will be part of an interfaith meeting and study center, is being built after Jewish groups protested the presence of a Christian house of worship on the site where an estimated 1.6 million Jews were exterminated during World War II.
The issue severely strained Catholic-Jewish relations for several years. But tensions have eased since ground was broken on the new center in March 1990.
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