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Some Highlights of John Paul II’s Papacy Concerning Catholic-Jewish
Relations
- October
16, 1978, Rome – Cardinal Karol Wojtyla is elected pope
and takes the name John Paul II.
- October,
1978 – At a reception at the Vatican, the new pope’s first audience
is given to his boyhood Jewish friend, Jerzy Kluger. (The Hidden Pope,
by Darcy O’Brien, page 6)
- March
12, 1979 – Greeting representatives of Jewish organizations at the
Vatican, he says that the Second Vatican Council “understood that our two
religious communities are connected and closely related at the very level
of their respective religious identities. … It is on the basis of all this
that we recognize with utmost clarity that the path along which we should
proceed with the Jewish religious community is one of fraternal dialogue
and fruitful collaboration.” (Pope John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage:
Texts on Jews and Judaism 1979 - 1995, Crossroad, New York, 1995,
page 4).
- June
7, 1979, Auschwitz – he declares that no one can look on the Nazi genocide
of Jews with indifference. “In particular, I pause with you dear participants
in this encounter, before the inscription in Hebrew. This inscription awakens
the memory of the people whose sons and daughters were intended for total
extermination. This people draws its origin from Abraham, our father in
faith …. The very people who received from God the commandment, ‘Thou shalt
not kill,’ itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing.
It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.” (Spiritual Pilgrimage,
page 7).
- November
17, 1980, Mainz – In his address to the West German Jewish community,
Pope John Paul observes that, “The first dimension of [our] dialogue, that
is, the meeting between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked
by God [cf. Rom. 11:29], and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time
a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and the
second part of her Bible.” (Spiritual Pilgrimage, page
15).
- April
13, 1986, Rome – In his address during his historic visit to the Great
Synagogue of Rome, Pope John Paul says, “…the Church of Christ discovers
her ‘bond’ with Judaism by ‘searching into her own mystery.’ The Jewish
religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is ‘intrinsic’
to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which
we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers
and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.” (Spiritual Pilgrimage,
page 63).
- May
9, 1989 - Pope John Paul remembers the Jews of his hometown, Wadowice, “who were victims of persecution and were exterminated by the Nazis.” The
pope asks his boyhood Jewish friend, Jerzy Kluger, to represent him
at the unveiling of the commemorative plaque on the site of the destroyed
Wadowice synagogue. (See Letter to a Jewish Friend, by Gian
Franco Svidercoschi, Crossroad, New York, 1994.)
- December
30, 1993, Rome and Jerusalem – formal diplomatic relations
are established between the Holy See and Israel.
- April
7, 1994 - Concert in the Vatican commemorating the victims of
the Holocaust.
- October
31, 1997 - In a letter to the participants in a symposium on the
theme of “The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Environment,” Pope John
Paul writes, “In the Christian world … erroneous and unjust
interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and
their alleged culpability
[for the crucifixion of Jesus] have circulated for too long, engendering
feelings of hostility toward this people.”
- March
12, 2000, Rome – On the First Sunday of Lent in the new millennium, Pope
John Paul prays publicly to God for forgiveness of Christian sins against
Jews during the past millennium. “God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and
his descendants to bring Your name to the nations: we are deeply saddened
by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused
these children of Yours to suffer and asking Your forgiveness we wish to
commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”
- March
21 – 26, 2000, Israel – Pope John Paul II’s historic
pilgrimage to Israel.
- March
23, 2000, Jerusalem – During his talk in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad
Vashem, Pope John Paul states, “In this place of memories, the
mind and heart and soul feel an extreme need for silence. Silence in
which to remember.
Silence in which to try to make some sense of the memories which come
flooding back. Silence because there are no words strong enough to deplore
the terrible
tragedy of the Shoah.
- “My own personal memories are of all that happened
when the Nazis occupied Poland during the war. I remember my Jewish friends
and neighbors, some of whom perished, while others survived. I have come
to Yad
Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of
everything, especially of human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust.
More than half
a century has passed, but the memories remain.
- “Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in
Europe, we are overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so
many. Men,
women and children, cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they
knew. How
can we fail to heed their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened.
No one can diminish its scale.
- “We wish to remember. But we wish to remember
for a purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as
it did for the
millions of innocent victims of Nazism.”
- March
26, 2000, Jerusalem – Pope John Paul prays at the Western Wall, formally
committing the Catholic Church “to genuine fellowship with the people of
the Covenant.” He places a copy of the text of the prayer for
forgiveness (from the prayer service in Rome on March 12) in the cracks
of the wall.
- January 15, 2005 – Pope makes a
statement on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
in which he states, “No one is permitted to pass by the tragedy
of the Shoah. That attempt at the systematic destruction of an entire
people
falls like
a shadow on the history of Europe and the whole world; it is a crime
which will for ever darken the history of humanity. May it serve, today
and for
the future, as a warning: there must be no yielding to ideologies which
justify contempt for human dignity on the basis of race, color, language
or religion.
I make this appeal to everyone, and particularly to those who would
resort, in the name of religion, to acts of oppression and terrorism.”
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