Writing
in the Vatican's official newspaper, the head of Italy's Jewish
community criticized Vatican policy but called for strengthened
Catholic-Jewish ties.
Renzo Gattegna, president of the umbrella
Union of Italian Jewish Communities wrote in an Op-Ed published
Wednesday that as a step toward "continuing with the initiatives
dedicated to reciprocal understanding and friendship," it would be
"useful, necessary and certainly appreciated" for the Vatican to openly
and forcefully renounce "any manifestation of intent aimed at the
conversion of the Jews."
This,
he said, should be accompanied by the elimination of a recently
reinstated Good Friday prayer that seems to call for such conversion
attempts.
The removal of the prayer, he wrote, "would be a strong
and significant signal of the acceptance of a relationship based on
equal dignity and reciprocal respect."
Gattegna's article, which was highlighted on the front page of the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano,
was framed as the latest response to a recent miniseries on state-run
Italian television that portrayed controversial World War II Pope Pius XII as working hard to save Jewish lives.
The series has rekindled lively debate in the media over Pius' role
during the Holocaust. Critics accuse Pius of having ignored Jewish
suffering, while the Vatican and his supporters, who have put Pius on
the path to sainthood, maintain that he worked behind the scenes.
Gattegna said the sainthood process was purely an internal Vatican
process in which the Jews did not want to intervene, but he criticized
the television series as "hagiographic" and "full of inaccuracies."
He also renewed calls for scholars to be allowed to complete in-depth
research in the Vatican archives on Pius' reign in order to clarify the
facts.
SIC: JP/INT'L