Conditions for a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel are not in place, Vatican officials said Monday, adding that talks last week between the Holy See and Holy Land on issues including taxation of church property and visas for Catholic clergy had made no progress. 'There is no talk,' of a papal trip to the Holy Land in 2008, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at reporter's briefing.
'The Pope has expressed on many occasions his desire to travel to the Holy Land,' he said, referring to an invitation made by Israeli President Shimon Peres when he met the pontiff at the Vatican in September.
'However, there is both the need for a condition of general peace in the area, and that relations between the Church and the local realities be taken into consideration, so as to determine if there are positive signs to encourage an act as important as a visit,' Lombardi said.
Speaking earlier at the same briefing, Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio, a senior Vatican cleric who participated in talks with Israeli officials on December 13 in Jerusalem, said that most sticking points with the Jewish state remained unresolved.
Noting how post-meeting communiques 'say everything and nothing', Veglio said that the joint statement issued after the Israel-Vatican talks 'said everything that could have been said, because the nothing expressed therein is the reality.'
'As long as we talk about God, about peace, the promotion of the rights of women and other human rights, it is easy to reach agreement. But when we start discussing the details, and I refer in particular to the issue of taxes, then differences emerge,' Veglio said.
Veglio who is Secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, was referring to the long-standing dispute between the Vatican and the Jewish state over the taxation of church property in the Holy Land including churches and shrines, but also schools and hospitals.
The Vatican has also repeatedly asked Israel to ease visa restrictions on Catholic priests and nuns, especially those from Arab nations.
'However, we greeted each other with cordiality,' Veglio said, adding that the next round of Vatican-Israel talks would take place in Rome in May 2008.
Last month remarks by a senior Vatican diplomat, Monsignor Pietro Sambi, that relations between Israel and the Vatican 'were better' before the two established full diplomatic ties in 1993, triggered a diplomatic row.
The Vatican later qualified the remarks as expressing Sambi's 'personal' opinion, but the incident was widely interpreted as signalling the Holy See's frustration over negotiations with Israel.
For years the Vatican resisted establishing diplomatic ties because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, disputes over church property in the Holy Land and the status of Jerusalem, a city sacred to Jews and Muslims for which the Vatican champions the granting of an international status.
While Israel has in the past offered to create a special panel to oversee property cases involving the Vatican, it has also expressed fear that giving tax exemptions to the Catholic Church could open the door for other churches and groups to seek similar treatment.
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