A shade over half of the 302 priests polled in Italy, seat of the Roman Catholic Church, believe the Vatican should extend diplomatic recognition to Israel.
But 67 percent of them would link recognition to a solution of the Palestinian problem, according to the survey conducted by the SWG agency of Trieste, published in the weekly Panorama.
While over 84 percent of the priests denied that anti-Semitism exists in their parishes, more than half said it exists in varying degrees in Italy as a whole.
Many of the priests and parishioners quoted by Panorama expressed sympathy for Israel. But remarks of others were tinged with anti-Israel or anti-Semitic bias.
“When Israel is mixed up in things, there’s always trouble,” said Luisa Cravino, an elderly woman in Turin.
Carla Ghisio thought Saddam Hussein had a right to launch Scud missiles at Israel. “How else could he defend himself? Israel scares me because it is armed like America, a lot more than Iraq,” she said.
The Rev. Francesco Patti in Milan said anti-Semitism is non-existent in that northern Italian metropolis. “If I really must speak the truth, there is, rather, an opportunistic pro-Semitism, because the Jews count, they have in their hands the levers of finance,” the cleric said.
Although nearly 50 percent of those polled think Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is the most likely cause of anti-Semitism, 19.2 percent cited the Jew’s “wealth and power.” Only 1.3 percent said “the killing of Christ.”
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