American Jewish leaders accepted an invitation by the Vatican to meet with Pope John Paul II in Rome at the end of August or early September, prior to the Pope’s visit to the United States and the scheduled meeting with Jewish leaders in Miami on September 11.
The invitation was extended Tuesday by Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, in a telephone call from Rome to Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, chairman of the international affairs department of the Synagogue Council of America (SCA) and chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, (IJCIC).
After a two-and-one-half-hour meeting Wednesday in the offices of the SCA, representatives of the IJCIC decided to accept the invitation.
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, international affairs director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), told reporters that the meeting with the Pope should “clear the air” and the misunderstanding that resulted from the Pope’s recent audience with President Kurt Waldheim of Austria who is accused of being a Nazi war criminal.
“There are fundamental and difficult matters to discuss,” Tanenbaum told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Thursday. “We want to review with the Holy See the meeting with Waldheim and the whole question of the Pope’s attitude toward the Nazi Holocaust.”
Tanenbaum said that the Jewish leaders, by accepting the Pope’s invitation, are hopeful that the meeting “will open the way” for their participation in a meeting with the Pope in Miami on Sept. 11. The Miami meeting was in doubt following the Pope-Waldheim meeting June 25, a meeting that angered and upset American Jewish leaders.
The Jewish community was angered not only by the invitation to Waldheim but also by the Pope’s failure to mention the fact that Jews were the main victims at the Maidanek concentration camp. The Pope visited Maidanek last May and listed 14 nationalities whose members were murdered by the Nazis. He did not mention the Jews, although 850,000 of them were killed there.
FULL AGENDA TO BE DISCUSSED
A statement issued here Thursday by the SCA said that the meeting with the Pope in Rome would last between 60 to 90 minutes. It said that “the full agenda of Catholic/Jewish relations would be discussed with the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Vatican Secretarial to be followed by a meeting with Pope John Paul II.”
The members of the IJCIC are: The Synagogue Council of America, World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith and the Israel Interfaith Association. Since 1972, IJCIC has represented the world Jewish community in discussions with the Vatican on Catholic/Jewish relations.
Waxman said Thursday that other issues to be discussed during the Vatican meetings are anti-Semitism and the Vatican’s continued refusal to recognize the State of Israel.
As for the Miami meeting with the Pope, Waxman said: “We reserve our final decision on whether or not to go to Miami for the ceremonial meeting with the Pope pending the outcome of the forthcoming discussions at the Vatican.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
