Word: vaticans
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...bishops this year to bring the College of Cardinals to its full complement of 120 voting members. John Paul, having already named more saints than any other Pope, plans on Sept. 3 to declare two of his predecessors blessed. The elevation of John XXIII, hero of the progressive Vatican II initiatives of the early 1960s, will raise no hackles, but that of Pius IX, an oppressor of Jews in the mid-1800s, will. (The march toward canonization of another Pius--XII--has stalled in the face of renewed charges that he stood by silently during the Holocaust.) John Paul also...
...past century, from 13% of the population to a tiny 2%, of which half are Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic.) John Paul made no overt attempts to influence the Israeli-Palestinian talks that continue, low key, in Washington. He did not use the trip to announce any dramatic new Vatican policy. Instead, as the week progressed, it became clear that he hoped that while tiptoeing through the political minefields, he could come to this most disputatious of territories and, through the force of his stooped presence and still Herculean will, simply inspire good...
...certainly a logical extension of one man's efforts regarding the Jews and their state: first as a Polish archbishop helping draft the Vatican II language recognizing that the Jews did not kill Jesus, and then as the Pope who pushed through the Vatican's diplomatic recognition of Israel in 1993, making a state visit possible. (The Vatican's relations with the Palestinians have long been good...
...Vatican enjoys wide areas of agreement with Israel regarding its statehood and security, but it has pointedly called any power's unilateral actions in Jerusalem "morally and legally unacceptable." Indeed, with the exception of two Latin American countries, no nation has validated Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem by maintaining an embassy there. The Pope retired, as he would every night of the trip, in the papal nuncio's residence in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem...
...Jewish Congress's Phil Baum, who admitted that "it was perhaps wishful thinking that the Pope would explicitly apologize in his visit to Yad Vashem today for the silence of Pope Pius XII and the institutional church during the Holocaust." Baum added that "it is sometimes forgotten that the Vatican bears no direct responsibility for the Holocaust." Although the church had been "cruelly delinquent" in its response to the horror, "that moral failure, at least, the Pope's words today have done much to remedy." Perhaps most important, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose voice cracked as he talked...