Jewish Groups Seek Resolution of Issues Before Pope Meeting

Unhappy over Pope John Paul II’s remarks at the controversial papal audience last week with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, major Jewish organizations on Monday broadened the agenda of concerns they now say must be resolved before they will attend a scheduled interfaith meeting with the pontiff in Miami in September.

The Pope’s audience in the Vatican with Waldheim, who has been accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes, infuriated Jews the world over, especially because John Paul made no public mention of Waldheim’s past as a German intelligence officer during World War II.

An international umbrella group of Jewish organizations is demanding “substantive discussion” with the Pope on such matters as a mutual understanding of the Holocaust; anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, and promoting peace in the Middle East in the context of Vatican diplomatic recognition of Israel, according to Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the New York-based American Jewish Committee.

The Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with 116 countries, but has declined to grant official diplomatic recognition to either Israel or Jordan, citing the need for their border conflicts to be resolved.

Tanenbaum said in a telephone interview Monday that he had been authorized to draft the letter on behalf of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations.

The letter will be sent to Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Vatican’s apostolic pro-nuncio to the United States, Tanenbaum said.

Several major U.S. Jewish groups that were to co-sponsor the Pope’s Miami meeting have already said they will boycott the dialogue; others have said their participation hinges on the outcome of the meeting they have requested beforehand with the Pope.

Rabbi Henry Michelman, executive vice president of the Synagogue Council of America, a federation of rabbinic and congregational Jewish groups based in New York, said the Pope-Waldheim audience had only strengthened his group’s determination not to attend the largely ceremonial meeting in Miami until “some very serious matters . . . in Vatican-Jewish relations” are worked out.

Added Rabbi A. James Rudin, interreligious affairs director for the American Jewish Committee: “There is anger and dismay (in the Jewish community), not merely because the Pope held the audience (with Waldheim) but in the fact that the Pope’s speech didn’t have any more accountability for World War II built into it.”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center announced a petition drive Monday for a “communication of conscience” to be presented to the Pope in Miami, the first stop of his nine-city U.S. visit Sept. 10-19.