Uruguayan Bishops Conference Confers with Jewish Leadership

The Uruguayan Bishops’ Conference received a delegation of the country’s Jewish leaders in a “cordial meeting” at which agreement was reached to strengthen contacts and cooperation between the two religious communities, the World Jewish Congress reported today.

The chairman of the Bishops’ Conference, Montevideo Archbishop Msgr. Carlos Parteli welcomed the delegation of the Comite Central Israelita del Uruguay, the representative body of Uruguayan Jewry and the WJC affiliate here. The delegation of the Comite was headed by its president, Dr. Nahum Bergstein.

Parteli expressed satisfaction on behalf of the Conference that this official meeting had come about as the culmination of previous contacts maintained by the coordinator for Jewish-Christian relations, Leonel Verissimo. In his welcoming remarks, he noted: “As sons of the same God, Christians and Jews have much in common and the furthering of mutual relations is highly desirable and positive.”

At the close of the meeting, the Catholic Bishops, and the representatives of the Jewish community announced they had agreed to the following steps in furtherance of cooperative action: setting up periodic meetings between the Bishops’ Conference and the Comite; in the interval, creating permanent functioning working groups comprising Christians and Jews acting on the basis of a specific agenda; and initiation of an educational program explaining the meaning and content of Jewish holidays and liturgy.

The communique on the meeting noted that the intitial example of giving meaning to this agreement was the lecture the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Uruguay, Nejemias Berman, delivered on the very day of the encounter to the Catholic high school Our Lady of the Garden on the subject of Passover.