IN AN attempt to smooth increasingly strained relations between the Catholic Church and Jews worldwide, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday used the platform of his weekly public audience in St Peter’s to send a message of “solidarity” to Jews.
The pope was trying to mend fences that have been at least partially broken by his decision last weekend to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist Lefebvre bishops, one of whom is a well-known Holocaust denier.
“While I renew with affection the expression of my full and unquestionable solidarity with our Jewish brothers, I hope the memory of the Shoah will induce humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of hate when it conquers the heart of man,” said the pope.
The pope’s words of reassurance were clearly prompted by Tuesday’s decision from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the supreme Jewish governing body, to break off official ties with the Vatican in reaction to the “reinstatement” of Holocaust denier, British-born bishop Dr Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Pius X, the traditionalist group founded by breakaway French archbishop Dr Marcel Lefebvre.
Yesterday’s Jerusalem Post claimed the rabbinate has cancelled a planned meeting in early March with the Holy See’s Commission for Relations with Jews.
According to the newspaper, the director general of the rabbinate, Oded Wiener, wrote a letter to the president of the commission, German cardinal Walter Casper, in which he said that “without a public apology and recanting, it will be difficult to maintain the dialogue”.
Other senior Jewish leaders expressed their concern yesterday. The chief rabbi of Haifa, Shear Yishuv Cohen, told reporters that he expected Dr Williamson to publicly retract his statements before diplomatic dialogue with Rome could be renewed. Rabbi David Rosen, of the American Jewish Committee, claimed that the pope’s decision to lift the Lefebvre excommunications had created an atmosphere of “bad faith”.
Rabbi Rosen, who is experienced in diplomatic dealings with Rome, suggested that perhaps the pope had been badly advised: “I tend to believe that the pope was simply not informed about Williamson in advance and now he is in a very uncomfortable situation. I don’t think it is my place to tell the church precisely what to do but Williamson should be censured in some way or forced to retract his statements.”
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi called on the rabbinate to “think again”, pointing to the pope’s words in his address yesterday morning as an emphatic answer to those who might doubt the position of the pope and the Catholic Church on the Holocaust.
Rabbinate director Oded Wiener called the pope’s speech “a big step forward towards a resolution of the problem”.