Carmelite Order Backs Auschwitz Convent Move

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Carmelite order said Saturday that they support moving one of their convents from the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland as Jewish groups have demanded.

Father Anthony Morello, general counselor of the Carmelite order, said he gave his order’s assurances it supported moving the convent away from the Nazi death camp during a meeting with Sigmund Sternberg, head of the International Council of Christians and Jews.

In his statement, Morello said he affirmed that all along the position of the general of the order, Father Philip Sainz de Baranda, “has been that agreements must be honored.”

The statement did not say exactly when the meeting was held.

Sternberg helped moderate the Auschwitz dispute when he announced Friday that the Polish primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, had assured him in a letter that the convent must be moved from the site of the death camp.

Catholic and Jewish leaders agreed in Geneva in 1987 to move the Carmelite convent. The nuns were to be transferred to a nearby prayer center last February, but the center was not erected and the nuns remain at a building beside the Auschwitz camp.

Glemp and other Polish church leaders later opposed moving the nuns. In defending the current site, Glemp made statements that some Jews viewed as anti-Semitic.

Many Polish Catholics have supported keeping the convent where it is. They argue that the nuns are not harming anyone and that many Polish Catholics were killed at Auschwitz.

Jewish groups complained that the convent and its religious symbols are offensive at a site where 2.5 million Jews were killed as part of Hitler’s campaign to exterminate European Jews during World War II. About 1.5 million of Auschwitz’s 4 million victims were Polish Christians and other non-Jews.