Monday, January 18, 2010

Pope to visit Rome synagogue amid Jewish anger

Pope Benedict XVI was headed Sunday for Rome's main synagogue for a much-anticipated visit after angering many Jews by moving his wartime predecessor Pius XII further on the road to sainthood.

A 500-strong press corps will record Benedict's third visit to a Jewish house of worship, which comes barely four weeks after he revived controversy over Pius XII, whom many Jews accuse of inaction over the Holocaust.

The visit, announced in October, appeared at risk of being cancelled amid howls of protest over the papal decree bestowing the title "venerable" on the Nazi-era pope.

The tension is in stark contrast to the warm welcome reserved for Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, who became the first modern pope to visit a synagogue -- the same imposing temple on Rome's River Tiber -- in 1986.

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom is set to welcome Benedict to the synagogue, he told Israeli public radio, the first visit by a pontiff to the site in 24 years.

"Benedict XVI was in Israel less than a year ago and visited Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem) and his visit today is an historic event that draws great emotion," he added.

"It is a religious event, not a political one, and it should symbolise the reconciliation between Jews and Catholics."

A high-profile stayaway Sunday is the president of Italy's assembly of rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, who said Benedict had "weakened" ties between Catholics and Jews.

Israel's ambassador to the Holy See will attend but remarked that "Catholic anti-Judaism still exists".

Adding fuel to the fire, the head of the Roman Catholic Church on Friday urged Vatican doctrinal experts to speed rapprochement with a Catholic fraternity that includes a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.

Renzo Gattegna, who heads the Union of Communities of Italian Jews, said: "It cannot be denied that some decisions taken by the current pope in 2009 led to moments of tension and concern on the Jewish side."

Gattegna listed the Pius XII and Williamson affairs as well as Benedict's decision to rehabilitate the Latin version of the Catholic Church's Good Friday mass, which contains a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.

Cooler heads on both sides see the occasion as an important step along the way to reconciliation between the two faiths, a process that began in the 1960s with Vatican II.

The 82-year-old German-born pope said the visit would open a "new phase along the irrevocable path of agreement and friendship" between Catholics and Jews.

The pope's host, Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, said for his part that the visit was a sign that Benedict wanted to "continue the dialogue".

The director of Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano asserted Saturday that few Catholics had done as much as Benedict XVI to bring Christians and Jews together, hailing the pope's "steps forward" since a 1965 Vatican II declaration absolved Jews of blame for Jesus' death.

Participants are to include the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, Israel's apostolic nuncio Antonio Franco and Oded Wiener, secretary general of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

Rome's Jewish community, the oldest in Europe, has some 15,000 members.

While Pius XII was pope, the Nazis rounded up more than 1,000 Roman Jews for deportation on October 16, 1943. Only a handful returned from the death camps.

Benedict is to place a wreath before a plaque commemorating this tragedy before going into the synagogue.

He will also stop before another inscription marking a 1982 attack by Palestinian extremists that killed a two-year-old child and wounded 27 other people.

In a speech, Benedict is expected to stress the common roots of the two faiths as he did during his trip to Israel in May 2009.

Later he is to meet briefly with Rabbi Di Segni before planting an olive tree to record his visit.

Just a few weeks after a young woman assaulted the pope in St Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve, yanking the pope to the floor but not harming him, security was tight ahead of Sunday's synagogue visit.

The route Benedict will take across the Tiber from the Vatican was to be determined at the last minute.
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SIC: AFP