"Pope Benedict XVI told a delegation from the Anti-Defamation League that he would continue to fight anti-Semitism.
At a meeting Wednesday the pope thanked the ADL delegation, saying, according to an ADL statement issued after the meeting, 'It is very important what you do.'
When asked if he would continue to condemn anti-Semitism, the Pope replied: 'I will, you know I will,' according to the statement."
"President Peres meets Pope Benedict XVI, says 'alternative to peace is Iranian hegemony'
President Shimon Peres met with the Pope Benedict XVI and asked for his help in releasing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Benedict said he would do all he could to assist the process.
The pope and senior Vatican officials expressed hope that the Israeli-Palestinian talks starting Thursday would bring peace to the region and respect the 'legitimate aspirations' of both sides."
"AsiaNews (Tel Aviv) - On Thursday, the President of the State of Israel, will be received in Audience at Castelgandolfo by Pope Benedict XVI. In preparation for this appointment, the octogenarian Head of State told an interviewer on the First Channel of Italy’s public television (RAI): 'The relations between the Vatican and the Jewish State are the best since the times of Jesus Christ, and have never been so good in two thousand years of history.' He added too: 'The reigning Pontiff wishes to have a sincere dialogue with us, as we wish to have with the Vatican.'
It is difficult to foresee that the visit of Peres to the Pope will have any specific effect on practical details of these relations, which in substance are being dealt with through other channels. The President, in Israel, is an almost exclusively symbolic figure, while the executive power is exercised by the Government. More probably, President Peres’s travels are in the context of the task he has for a while now assigned himself of cultivating Israel’s international image, given wide-spread skepticism concerning the intentions of the Government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister himself will on that day be in Washington, for the start of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, 'Abu Mazen' – negotiations convened by President Barack Obama of the United States.
As for the bilateral relations with the Catholic Church (or as is improperly said in the televised interview, 'the Vatican'), these are now at a phase of special importance. Since 29 July 1992, the Holy See and Israel are committed to concluding a series of 'concordat-type' treaties, which together are meant to achieve legal and fiscal security for the Catholic Church in Israel. Two of those treaties were already signed and ratified some years ago: The 'Fundamental Agreement' (30 December 1993), a kind of 'Bill of Rights' for the Church in the Jewish State, and the 'Legal Personality Agreement' (10 November 1997), which recognizes for civil purposes too the legal personality of the Church and of Church bodies. However, neither of these treaties has been introduced into Israel’s own legislation, which means that their usefulness is at present limited.
Since 11 March 1999, the Parties have been negotiating a third Agreement, for the purpose of confirming the fiscal status of the Church in Israel, especially the historic fiscal exemptions, which are an essential requirement for the ability of the Church to continue to carry out her functions of representing in the Holy Land the world-wide Church and of caring for the faithful locally. This third Agreement will also have to safeguard the Church’s properties in Israel, the Holy Places above all, and to provide for the restitution of certain such properties, such as for example the church-shrine in Caesarea, which was expropriated and razed to the ground in the 1950’s. The next 'plenary' meeting of the negotiators – who together constitute the 'Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel' - is scheduled for 6 December this year. In the meanwhile, well informed sources say, the negotiators are working intensively. The United States, France, Italy and other nations are closely (though discreetly) following the course of the negotiations, consistently with their support – and that of their Catholic citizens – for the presence and work of the Church in the Holy Land.
Once this Agreement is made (and it is impossible to foresee when this may be), or even before then and parallel to the talks about it, the 'agenda' foresees several more Agreements of no lesser importance. In the course of the years, three subjects in particular have been publicly emphasized. First of all, an agreement that would guarantee and regulate in a stable manner the issuance of entry visas and residence permits for Church personnel from elsewhere. Here the State’s policies have varied over time, though their overall direction has been rather restrictive.
More than anything else, it is the lack of legal certainty that is problematic, namely the lack of officially published criteria.
Then there is this subject that is of the greatest pastoral concern, norms to guarantee the access to pastoral care of members of the faithful who find themselves in circumstances of limited mobility, specifically prisoners, members of the military and hospital patients. The accord on these matters between the Government of Italy and the Union of the Jewish Communities in Italy is often mentioned as a model, given the analogy between the small Jewish minority in Italy and the small Christian minority in Israel. The third subject often publicly mentioned in these years is a review of the presentation of Christ, Christianity and the Church in Israel’s school system. It would serve to verify effective reciprocity in relation to the immense undertaking by the Catholic Church over recent decades to ensure a correct, indeed a friendly, presentation of Judaism and the Jews in Catholic education.
There is then still some way to go in order for the 'dialogue' mentioned by President Peres to achieve its purposes completely. However, the forward-looking optimism of the President of Israel is promising, and in fact it seems that both Parties are working towards that goal and are making steady progress.
Thus the Franciscan jurist, Father David-Maria A. Jaeger, an expert on Church-State relations in Israel, tells AsiaNews: “Especially in the last few years, it appears that the negotiations, which in effect constitute this ‘dialogue’ – to which President Peres refers – between the Holy See and the State of Israel, are being pursued by both Parties with great seriousness and commitment, as is evident from the ‘Joint Communiqués’ released from time to time by the Bilateral Commission. Though without ignoring the problems in various sectors of the day-to-day relations between the Church and the State, optimism is obligatory, and such optimism in itself has a decidedly beneficial influence.” He adds too: 'In the end, obstinate optimism endows the experience of daily life with an eschatological horizon.'" (source)
"For the layman, sometimes it’s hard to know what things actually mean. After all, one cannot be an expert on everything, so we must rely on others whom we trust. The problem of course is that even when we read information from trusted sources we may be misled. For instance, a recent article on Zenit discusses some documents recently found by Michael Hesemann from Pave the Way Foundation. I think there is a problem of interpretation in the way these documents are evaluated. In the past Mr. Hesemann also presented findings of documents in a misleading way, as he implied the Catholic Church had always been opposed to the Nazi Party. Even though it’s true the Church banned membership into the party prior to 1933, after Hitler came to power and the Vatican signed an agreement with Nazi Germany that same year the Church lifted the ban. This detail, and the fact that millions of Catholics subsequently became members of the Nazi Party and wholeheartedly supported it and its policies seems to have been conveniently overlooked in Mr. Hesemann’s reporting. See 'Paving the way to disinformation'.
The new documents recently found were letters sent by the Vatican Secretary of State and later Pope Pius XII Cardinal Pacelli in 1938 to several nunciatures and apostolic delegations. In these letters, Cardinal Pacelli requested visas for 'ebrei convertiti' (converted Jews), and “non-Aryan Catholics”. This of course sounds good, but not as good as Mr. Hesemann would like us to think."
I urge all of you to read the rest of Gabriel's blog article by using the link below and definitely consider purchasing his book...
"Historian: visas that Pius XII secured for converts probably went to other Jews as well.
'Hitler’s Pope,' Pope Pius XII, may have arranged for 200,000 Jews to leave Germany after Kristallnacht, The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.
German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann told the paper that Pius, then known as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, wrote to archbishops around the world, asking them to obtain exit visas for “non-Aryan Catholics” and Jewish converts to Christianity.
Hesemann is doing research in the Vatican archives sponsored by the Pave the Way foundation, a US interfaith group."
"Jewish groups demand historic speech moved from Yom Kippur Eve to allow Jews to attend
Britain's new government has been caught in an unexpected political crisis as the pope's visit approaches. The Guardian reported Sunday that the speech of Benedict XVI in Parliament will take place on Yom Kippur, which has attracted criticism from the Jewish community and its supporters.
The leader of the Catholic Church will arrive in London in September and is expected to remain in the UK for four days. The jewel in the crown is to be an historic speech before the British Parliament on September 17. The visit already drew criticism in the mainly Anglican kingdom, but the date of the speech has added the Jewish voice to this criticism."
