Vatican Criticized for Excluding Jews at Anti-Semitism Talks
The leader of Italy’s Jewish community has expressed disappointment that a Vatican conference investigating Christian roots of anti-Semitism will include no Jews.
Sixty scholars from around the world, including several Protestant and Orthodox figures, are being invited to the Oct. 30-Nov. 1 conference, “The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Christian Environment.”
“We would have hoped that some Jewish scholars might have been invited as observers,” Tullia Zevi said Thursday. She said she made that suggestion to the organizers. “The answer was very polite but firm that this was an internal church [conference].
“Nevertheless, we have great confidence in the work of the commission,” she added.
“Essentially Christian themes” will be the meeting’s focus, “and this is the reason why their development and elaboration has been entrusted for the most part to Catholic theologians,” the Vatican said.
The conference falls within Pope John Paul II’s call for a reexamination of the Roman Catholic Church’s conscience on the threshold of Christianity’s third millennium.
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