U.S. Cardinal Apologizes for Jerusalem Rift

Cardinal John J. O’Connor, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, publicly apologized here Thursday for any offense to the Israeli people and their leaders caused by his cancellation, under Vatican orders, of scheduled meetings with government officials.

O’Connor’s comments came within hours of his arrival at the beginning of what is now being described as a five-day “private” visit that has underlined continuing deep strains in relations between the Jewish state and the Vatican.

Unfamiliar With Protocol

“I think it is imperative to let you know very honestly and forthrightly that because of the haste of my preparations for this visit, because of my newness in my current responsibilities, and particularly in my newness as a member of the College of Cardinals, I failed to familiarize myself with that protocol which normally surrounds visits of the sacred College of Cardinals,” O’Connor said after celebrating Mass at St. Savior’s Church in Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

“Because of that error on my part, unfortunately, it is quite understandable that the people of Israel and those who govern them might have construed some kind of deliberately intended offense. Nothing could be further from the truth. . . . I deeply regret and certainly apologize for any offense that might have been perceived.”

O’Connor was invited to come to Israel as a guest of the government, and his itinerary was to have included meetings with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, with the alternate prime minister and foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and President Chaim Herzog.

But last week, under orders from the Vatican, O’Connor ruled out official meetings with top Israeli leaders for fear that to go ahead with them would imply acceptance of Israel’s claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Israel claims united Jerusalem as its political capital, having captured the eastern half of the formerly divided city from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Most Israeli government offices are now located here.

Touched Off Furor

But the Vatican’s position is that Jerusalem should have a special, internationally agreed status as a Holy City for Christians, Muslims and Jews. It has withheld diplomatic recognition of Israel pending resolution of Jerusalem’s status.

The position taken by the Vatican in the O’Connor incident has touched off a furor here, given Jewish sensitivities that date far beyond the creation of the Israeli state to centuries of religiously motivated persecution at the hands of Christians generally and Roman Catholics in particular.

Shamir and Peres flatly rejected suggestions that they meet with O’Connor privately, away from their offices.

“On this there can be no compromise,” a Shamir spokesman said. “Israel has one capital, and that is where official meetings are held.”

Reflecting widespread opinion in the Israeli news media, the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv said Monday in an editorial that for any of the country’s leaders to meet O’Connor privately would be “tantamount to joining the boycott of our capital.”

The newspaper concluded: “We shall not regret it if the high-ranking guest . . . decides that under these conditions he will forgo the entire visit to the Holy Land.”

Some See Exploitation

Some Catholic officials here accused the Israeli government of trying to exploit O’Connor to gain recognition that it cannot win directly from the Vatican. One, quoted anonymously in the English-language Jerusalem Post, said that if Israeli officials want to talk about relations with the Vatican, New York “is not the address.”

Vatican relations with the Zionist movement have been rocky from the beginning. According to Sergio Minervi, an Israeli expert and author of a Hebrew-language book entitled “The Vatican, the Holy Land, and Zionism,” Pope Pius X, in a meeting in 1904 with Zionist pioneer Theodor Herzl, said that Rome could not recognize the movement for a Jewish state because “you did not recognize our Savior.”

Pius X also said that Jews who emigrated to Palestine would find Catholics there waiting to convert them to Christianity.

Some Israelis believed that there had been a change in Vatican attitudes under the present Pope, John Paul II. Minervi said in an interview that the Polish pontiff in 1984 became the first Vatican leader to call specifically for the security of the state of Israel. And last April he made a precedent-shattering visit to a Rome synagogue.

Hope, Bitterness

A statement by Israel’s President Herzog at that time underlined both the hope for change and the continuing bitterness toward the Vatican lingering just beneath the surface here.

Herzog said: “This is an important step forward, which I welcome wholeheartedly, on the way to conciliation and the correcting of the injustice which the church perpetrated on the Jewish people during 1,500 years of history. Again, history cannot be erased, but this historical injustice can be corrected out of a common eye to the future. Patently, this step cannot be complete so long as the Vatican does not recognize the state of Israel and so long as it flinches from establishing full and normal diplomatic relations with us, as it has with other countries in the region. . . .”

However, author Minervi said, the O’Connor episode indicates that Vatican-Israeli relations remain complex and controversial.

“The fact is that we generally put together relations between the church and the Jews and relations between the Vatican and Israel,” he said. “What they hope to do is to divide and separate--they hope to have good relations with Jews, by and large, without full diplomatic relations with Israel. Now it all depends on whether the Jews in the United States and elsewhere will accept this separation, which in our eyes is not admissible.”

‘Double Standard’ Charged

American Jewish organizations have condemned the latest episode. The American Jewish Congress, for example, issued a statement accusing the Vatican of a “double standard when it comes to its relations with the Jewish state” and saying it is “high time for the Vatican to accept the reality of Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel.”

Meanwhile, officials here appear anxious to make it clear that their argument is with Rome and that they see O’Connor as caught in the middle of a diplomatic furor for which he is not responsible.

The New York cleric met with Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem in his office Thursday evening, but apparently he will not tour the Old City on foot with the mayor, as visiting dignitaries usually do.

Today, O’Connor is to meet with the parents of Israeli soldiers missing in action in Lebanon, visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and meet with Religious Affairs Minister Zevulon Hammer.