The announcement last week that Israel and the Vatican have set up a commission aimed at establishing full diplomatic ties between the two states has drawn praise from many quarters here.
“Worries are completely out of place,” said Ali Rashid, the spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Rome. “I absolutely don’t see any dangers in any Islamic country in the Mediterranean region.”
Italian politicians praised the move. Liberal Party leader Renato Altissimo called it a “courageous act that will surely have favorable repercussions on the peace talks.”
Vatican Foreign Minister Jean-Louis Tauran told Vatican Radio that he felt “great satisfaction” at the announcement.
“Contrary to the past, the two sides, Israel and the Vatican, are not sitting at the same table only to confront one another, but to actively cooperate and to resolve in full synthesis all those problems that until now have put a brake on bilateral relations,” said Tauran.
“The meeting between the Holy See and Israel represents certainly a qualitative leap in the history of relations between the two states,” Tauran added. “We have now opened an official channel that will permit us to talk to resolve problems of common interest.”
Tauran pointed out that over the years there have been regular contacts between the Holy See and Israel through the apostolic delegate to Jerusalem, and through the Israeli ambassador to Italy.
These contacts, he said, “have contributed to create a climate of faith.”
MOVE NOT A SIGN OF CHANGE IN VATICAN POLICY
He denied, however, that the move to improve relations with Israel was a sign of change in Vatican policy.
“The initiative is within the framework of the line that the Holy See has always sustained and which affirms that there will not be peace in that region of the world if the situation of the Catholic Church in Israel and in the territories it administers is not bettered.
“There exists the necessity to resolve the Palestinian problem and there is also the famous problem of the status of the holy city of Jerusalem,” he said.
He said he did not believe the announcement would have any negative repercussions within Arab countries because “the Arabs, too, are seated around a peace table together with the Israelis.”
Rome’s chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, also welcomed the announcement, but he did not think that it would ever lead to any theological rapprochement between Catholicism and Judaism.
In an interview with Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper published over the weekend, he said that Vatican concerns for Christians living in Arab countries — some 30 million people in all had been among the factors hindering the establishment of ties between the two states.
“But now the fact that the peace process has received a boost from Rabin and that the Arab states have declared themselves generally open to it, put the Church in a difficult position: It risked remaining outside the mechanism that will decide everything in the Middle East,” said Toaff.
He called the move to better relations “an important gesture,” but added, “I don’t think that it signifies anything from the theological point of view.
“In the eyes of the Church, we are only survivors, survivors of the ‘old Israel’ that gave origin to the ‘true Israel.’
“We can have all the discussions we want, but not in the theological realm,” he said.
Asked if Jews could ever pardon the Church for its key role in spreading anti-Semitism, with all its tragic results, Toaff said, “It is not a question of pardoning or not. Judaism does not forget. It has to remember, not for a sentiment of vendetta, but because it is necessary. It is a useful warning for us and for the others.
“I believe that after this latest step anti-Semitism within the Christian matrix will continue to exist, but it will not be official anymore,” he said.
“Some time ago I was speaking with a senior prelate. I asked him if the bad parts of the Catechism regarding Jews have been removed. He said yes.
“But he also said that I should not think that everything would change in the blink of an eye. A priest who for 66 years had taught that the Jews had killed Jesus, that they are deicides, cursed by God,” he said, “will not change in a few days.”
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