Pope, Waldheim to Meet 3 Times in Austria Visit

Pope John Paul II is scheduled to meet President Kurt Waldheim three times during a visit to Austria in June, church officials said Friday.

Jewish groups in the United States have warned that meetings between the Pope and Waldheim, who was received by the pontiff in an audience at the Vatican amid widespread protest last June, could damage relations between Jews and the Roman Catholic Church.

Austrian bishops responsible for organizing the papal trip reiterated, however, that the Pope would meet the Austrian head of state three times, in accordance with protocol.

A high Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the meetings.

Waldheim has denied allegations by Western news publications and the World Jewish Congress that he was linked to Nazi war crimes while serving in the German army in the Balkans during World War II.

As president of Austria, Waldheim will greet John Paul II at Vienna airport June 23 and see him off at Innsbruck on June 27. The president will attend a reception for the Pope at the Hofburg Palace, the seat of the presidency, on June 23.

“It would be impossible not to keep to this order” of protocol, Bishop Johann Weber of Graz, one of the Austrian organizers of the visit, was quoted as saying Friday in the Vienna daily Arbeiterzeitung.

The Vatican official denied reports that Waldheim would accompany the Pope to the site of the Nazis’ Mauthausen concentration camp on June 24.

The Vatican official pointed out that the pontiff has no plans to meet with the president on that day. He said the Pope would start the day by meeting with Jewish officials, then visit Mauthausen with 15 survivors of the camp.

On Tuesday, Jewish groups in the United States denounced plans for further meetings between the Pope and Waldheim following last summer’s controversial Vatican visit.

But Tullia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities in Rome, said she does not understand why the visit is causing such an uproar now.

“The Pope said last June he was going to Austria . . . the Vatican is following its path,” she said.