Two rabbis will join 200,000 young Catholics from around the world who are gathering this weekend in Denver to meet with the pope.
Rabbis Jack Bemporad and A. James Rudin, both Reform rabbis who are among American Jewry’s most respected interreligious affairs experts, were invited to attend the biennial World Youth Day gathering as official observers.
Bemporad is director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.
Rudin is the American Jewish Committee’s director of interreligious affairs.
While in Denver for the Aug. 12-16 event, they will be meeting with senior Catholic leaders from the Vatican and the United States.
Bemporad will join 11 leaders from the Catholic, Muslim and Protestant communities in a meeting Saturday night “to try and see how the various religions can work together for world peace and for spiritual education,” he said.
That same evening Rudin will attend one of the gathering’s centerpieces — the pope’s world peace vigil, which will be held at Cherry Creek State Park.
Neither is sure if he will be meeting with John Paul II while in Denver.
The fact that Jews were invited to World Youth Day “shows that, despite all the tsuris ( which has strained Catholic Jewish relations over the last several years), positive relations is part of the Catholic Church’s agenda,” said Rudin.
For Jews the event is “a sign that even in this most Catholic event there is an understanding that Judaism is a world religion and we have a role to play, ” he said.
While meeting with key players in Rome’s hierarchy, Rudin said he plans to be “vocal” on two issues: the Vatican’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel and the role that the church can play in fighting xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
Negotiations to normalize relations between the Vatican and Israel are currently under way, but moving very slowly.
According to Bemporad, the invitation to participate in World Youth Day is representative of a new era in interreligious work.
“The new dimension is about how we can work together for common goals,” he said.
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