Eight days after Pope John Paul II paid his historic visit to Rome’s main synagogue, ranking Vatican figures hinted Sunday that one ramification of the Papal gesture could be Vatican recognition of the State of Israel.
Bishop Clemente Riva, president of the Ecumenical Committee of the Rome Diocese and a member of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, observed on a television interview that the Vatican’s failure to recognize Israel “is perhaps what offends Jews the most.” The Pope’s visit to the synagogue, he said, should be viewed as one more step toward recognition “which must, is bound to come, even though we cannot say when.”
Riva added that for some time now it has been said “off the record” that “the Pope has a great desire to visit Jerusalem and is just waiting for an opportunity.” Italian Jewish leaders feel this may well be the Pope’s next step and “he knows he has a standing invitation,” Tulia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, responded.
Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, who serves as president of both the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, noted that “official relations” between the Vatican and Israel “already exist, even if not yet on the highest level of the exchange of Ambassadors.”
He said that, after all, the Jews “are a people and a people expresses itself in the form of a State.” It is therefore natural for “Israel to want to have relations with all other states.”
NO MIDEAST PEACE WITHOUT ISRAEL
Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Holy See’s Commission for Peace and Justice, saw the Pope’s visit as a “spiritual step, but a step which must bear consequences on other levels. It is a step that will bring closer the recognition of Israel, which is awaited by Israel, and not only Israel but many others as well,” Etchegaray said.
He added, “Personally, I think we must take Israel into account when we speak of peace in the Middle East because without Israel there can be no peace.”
The Vatican Radio devoted much of its broadcasts last week to Israeli press comments on the Pope’s visit. It included, as one of the few “voice” selections in its round-up the portion of the speech by Giacomo Saban, president of the Rome Jewish community, during the Pope’s visit in which he stressed the Jewish people’s deep ties with Israel.
Zevi told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency she thought it was “unrealistic” to have expected the Pope to say anything about recognition of Israel during his synagogue visit. “The event was considered purely religious and no members of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State were there,” Zevi said. But she and most other Jewish and Catholic leaders feel the visit was a step that could lead toward recognition.
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