Cardinal John O’Connor has called for the resolution of “whatever obstacles have delayed” the removal of the Carmelite convent from Auschwitz.
However, the archbishop of New York has disappointed some Jews here by refusing to say that he would directly intervene to hasten the convent’s relocation.
The first public statement by O’Connor regarding the convent appeared in his weekly column for the newspaper Catholic New York.
O’Connor said that the agreement reached between Jewish and Catholic leaders in 1987 for the relocation of the convent should be honored.
That agreement had stipulated that the convent be moved by last Feb. 22. Since then, there has been great concern within the Jewish community that the convent will remain indefinitely.
O’Connor defended the Catholic authorities in Poland, saying he does not believe the Church has deliberately resisted moving the convent or has deliberately encouraged a slow-down.
The cardinal attributed the delay to “a variety of reasons, including complexities of dealing with the Polish government.”
O’Connor did not take a stand on the moral issue of whether or not the convent belonged at the site of the former death camp, where millions of Jews were murdered.
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, international relations consultant for the American Jewish Committee, said O’Connor’s refusal to become directly involved with the convent controversy conforms to the position taken by the Vatican.
The pope has maintained a policy of non-intervention, leaving the resolution of the issue to Polish Catholic authorities.
Tanenbaum did not take issue with O’Connor’s decision not to become directly involved in the negotiations.
But Rabbi Avraham Weiss, who led a group of protestors at the Auschwitz convent July 14, called O’Connor’s statement “a whimper” which left Weiss “pained and disappointed.”
Weiss said he had hoped that “as a leader of the Catholic community in a city with the largest Jewish population of any in the world, he would speak out forcefully.”
Instead, Weiss said, O’Connor “appears, in principle, not to oppose the convent at Auschwitz, and for that matter, convents at other former Nazi death camps.”
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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.
