Catholic Official Rejects Reports Pontiff Favors Internationalization of Jerusalem

Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher, director of the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University here, has rejected allegations that Pope Paul VI favors internationalization of Jerusalem. Msgr. Oesterreicher–who was born Jewish and speaks Hebrew but considers himself both a Jew and a Christian–noted in a statement that “When one knows that his (Paul’s) comments were elicited by an alarmist letter from three Jordanian bishops who envisioned an Israeli plot to oust Christian Arabs from the city and impede free access to the shrines, then the Pope’s words appear rather low-keyed.” He added that “it would be insulting his intelligence to assume that he favors a Jerusalem governed, or supervised, by a body in which Messrs. Mao and Brezhney will have vote and veto.” What Pope Paul spoke of in St. Peter’s Square on March 14, said Msgr. Oesterreicher, was “the recognition of the extraordinary requirements of the Holy Places” and “pluralism of historic and religious rights.”

The three Jordanian bishops the monsignor referred to had written to Pope Paul earlier this year to stress that Jerusalem had been “traditionally united with Jordan,” that the construction in Judea would turn the Old City into a “suffocating ghetto,” and that a “Hebrew belt” of new settlements for refugees would subject Christians and Muslims “to a control and to discrimination.” The bishops, said Msgr. Oesterreicher, were engaging in “a gross manipulation of the ‘problem of Jerusalem,'” and were not only “alarmists” but were “pretend(ing) to sound the alarm in the name of Jesus.” Msgr. Oesterreicher elaborated: “Jordan…must have been created on the drawing board. But there can be no doubt that the territory east of the River Jordan, largely desert, was carved out of Palestine and given to Emir Abdullah, the son of the Sherif of Mecca, in 1922, as a token of gratitude for his family’s support of Great Britain and as compensation for his brother Feisal’s loss of the throne of Syria.”

Continuing, Msgr. Oesterreicher stated: “For years, Transjordan was, though not in name, a British colony…Jordan would still be in possession of the Old City had it not joined the Six-Day War against the warning of Israel…If the brief possession of the Old City by Jordan–1949-1967–can be called a tradition, then the stationing of the Soviet army of occupation in Czechoslovakia is a tradition as well, and Tibet can be called a traditional part of Red China.” Msgr. Oesterreicher also criticized L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, for deploring, among other things, the “occupation of the ‘Arab sector'” of Jerusalem by Israel. “These tears are synthetic because of what was left unsaid,” he commented, noting that “Israel wrested the Old City from Jordan, but only after the latter had attacked.” Regarding Israeli construction in Jerusalem, the monsignor observed; “Why the housing of Jews who have been poor and deprived should radically change Jerusalem’s spiritual character is not clear to me. I would have thought that sheltering the homeless was a work of compassion…Christians who have not yet understood the signs of the time, and thus the meaning of Israel’s rejuvenation, will have to reconcile themselves to the fact that Jerusalem is a Jewish city, in origin, destiny and significance.”