The cardinal in charge of Vatican relations with world Jewry told Jewish leaders Tuesday that the Carmelite nuns occupying the controversial convent at Auschwitz will be relocated. But he could not say when such a move would take place.
Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, president of the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations With the Jews, said that the implementation of a February 1987 accord promising the convent’s relocation by February 1989 was effectively in the hands of the local prelate, Cardinal Franciszek Macharski of Krakow, Poland.
He told representatives of the International Jewish Committee on Interfaith Consultations that eventually the matter would have to be resolved by authorities of the Polish Catholic Church.
Willebrands acknowledged the worldwide importance of the convent matter and his desire to see it favorably resolved.
At the meeting, Gerhart Riegner, chairman of the World Jewish congress Executive, urged fellow IJCIC members to speak for the tiny Jewish community left in Poland, which he said has no effective spokespersons to articulate its opposition to the convent.
Rabbi A. James Rudin, IJCIC chairman, said Willebrands assured the group he “remains confident and hopeful; he hoped it would be implemented.”
Rudin told Willebrands, whom he and other members of IJCIC hold in high esteem, that the matter “should not be allowed to fester, because as it festers it grows more and more complicated.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
