Catholics Suspend Agreement to Move Auschwitz Convent

The Roman Catholic Church on Thursday suspended a 1987 agreement to move nuns from a Carmelite convent on the edge of Auschwitz and blamed Jewish groups for creating an “atmosphere of aggressive demands.”

The World Jewish Congress, which coordinated a campaign to move the convent, called Cardinal Franciszek Macharski’s announcement “a tragic blow” and urged the Vatican to overturn it.

Macharski, whose Krakow archdiocese includes the former concentration camp, said conditions “make it impossible” to carry out the accord.

Under the accord, the nuns were to be moved to a prayer center to be built several thousand yards away from the concentration camp.

Recent protests by Jewish groups at the convent, located since 1984 in a restored theater abutting the camp’s fence, have destroyed the atmosphere needed to create the new interfaith prayer center, Macharski said.

“At the foundation of an act of peace, there must be the wish for peace,” he said.

In Los Angeles, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called the decision by the Polish church “a tragic error which threatens the 40-year dialogue between our two faith communities.”