Jews and Vatican Agree to Fight Rising Anti-Semitism

Jewish and Roman Catholic leaders have agreed to work together to combat rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and to forge a closer relationship between the two religions after a recent period of friction.

The agreement was announced Thursday after a four-day meeting in Prague between the Vatican’s Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee on Inter-Religious Consultations.

It was the first formal meeting between the two groups in five years, a period marked by bitterness over Pope John Paul II’s 1988 meeting with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim and an attempt to maintain a Carmelite convent on the grounds of the Auschwitz death camp.

A statement issued by the meeting’s participants and released in Prague and New York called for a deepening spirit of cooperation between Catholics and Jews after noting that, in modern times, Catholics were not vigilant enough to react against manifestations of anti-Semitism.

A six-point program to combat rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe was announced. It includes calls for guaranteeing freedom of worship and religious education for all citizens and the elimination from textbooks of all racially or religiously prejudiced material.

Archbishop Edward Cassidy, the president of the Vatican Commission on Relations with Jews, was quoted in the statement as saying, “Anti-Semitism has found a place in Christian thought and practice (that) calls for an act of teshuvah (the Hebrew word for repentance) and of reconciliation on our part.”

Seymour Reich, the chairman of the Jewish group, said that, as a result of the meeting, “Catholic-Jewish relations are back on track.”

At the meeting, the Vatican reaffirmed its intention to prepare a Catholic document on the Holocaust and the historical background of anti-Semitism.