Pope to Meet With Jewish Leaders to Ease Tensions

Pope John Paul II will meet with a delegation of Jewish leaders in Rome in an attempt to ease interfaith tensions that erupted when the Pope hosted Austrian President Kurt Waldheim earlier this summer, U.S. Jewish officials said Wednesday.

Spokesmen for the Jewish organizations involved said the meeting on a broad range of issues will take place as early as the end of this month, less than two weeks before the Pope begins a 10-day visit to the United States.

“Such a meeting is unprecedented,” said Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of New York, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee. “It is an opportunity for us to have man-to-man and heart-to-heart talks across the table . . . to contain the damage that has been done” to Jewish-Catholic relations.

Jewish leaders were incensed at the Pope’s June 25 meeting with Waldheim, who earlier this year was barred by the Justice Department from visiting the United States after an investigation of his World War II service with a Nazi intelligence unit in the Balkans.

After the Waldheim meeting, Jewish leaders sought a meeting with the Pope in exchange for their participation in a Sept. 11 ceremony in Miami, the first stop on the pontiff’s U.S. tour.

The furor over the Waldheim visit was a crushing setback for Catholic-Jewish relations, which had been improving recently after many years of strain.

Waldheim, secretary-general of the United Nations from 1972 to 1982, has acknowledged serving in World War II in the Balkans but denied any wrongdoing. The Justice Department, in placing him on an immigration “watch list,” cited evidence that during the war he had helped deport thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps, where many later died.

The arrangement of a papal meeting for Jewish representatives was the result of extended negotiations. Jewish leaders, in disclosing the agreement, said that on Tuesday, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, Vatican secretariat for religious relations with Jewish people, telephoned New York Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, head of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, and issued the invitation.

On Wednesday, leaders from several Jewish groups met in New York and decided to accept the invitation. A delegation of about six will attend the meeting at the Vatican.

Announcement of the papal meeting drew immediate reaction from religious leaders in Los Angeles.

“The invitation of American Jewish leaders to Rome is a step in the right direction, and I trust will lead to much better communications between the American Jewish community and the Vatican,” said Rabbi Alfred Wolf of Los Angeles.

Wolf, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Skirball Institute and rabbi emeritus of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, is scheduled to address the Pope on behalf of the local Jewish community during the Pope’s visit to Los Angeles next month. He said that Los Angeles-area Jewish leaders will meet Monday to decide whether to participate in the four-faith meeting with the Pope on Sept. 16.

‘Most Optimistic

Msgr. Royale Vadakin, rector of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral and director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s ecumenical and interreligious affairs office, said that he is “most optimistic” that the interfaith event “will see active Jewish participation.”

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which promotes prosecution of Nazi war criminals, said it will delay making its decision on whether to participate in the Miami and Los Angeles meetings with the Pope until after the late August meeting in Rome. Members nationwide of the Wiesenthal Center have responded recently with “tens of thousands” of petitions urging the Vatican to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as a way to ameliorate the Waldheim furor.

“We look specifically for a significant action or an action-oriented response, not simply a rehashing of old ideas,” said Rabbi Meyer May, development director for the center.

Organizers of the Vatican meeting are counting on more than a ceremonial audience.

“It will be a substantive meeting on all aspects of our dialogue,” said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress in New York. He said the Vatican’s failure to recognize Israel would be an important item on the list.

“Normalization with the Jewish people cannot occur without normalization with the Jewish state,” he said.

Jewish officials said they expect to meet for about an hour and a half with the Pope. Before that, they will meet with other Vatican officials. During these talks, Steinberg said, “we will get down to the nitty-gritty” on the substantive issues.

At the time of the Pope’s meeting with Waldheim, Vatican officials said the pontiff was seeing him as he would any other head of state.

Times staff writers John Dart and Russell Chandler contributed to this story from Los Angeles.