Word: waldheim
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that relationship began in 1965, with the Second Vatican Council's decree denouncing anti-Semitism. But the Holy See still does not recognize Israel. And there have been other disputes, none more charged than the angry Jewish reaction to the audience John Paul granted to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in June. Waldheim has been accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes and consequently is unwelcome in numerous Western nations, including the U.S. The Vatican argues that declining to receive Waldheim would have been tantamount to judging him guilty.* Dismayed that John Paul made no mention of the Holocaust during Waldheim...
...Miami, the day after arriving and being greeted by President Reagan, he will confer with national Jewish leaders. Jews were upset by the Pope's audience with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who has been accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes. John Paul attempted to mollify ill feelings with a letter expressing sorrow over the Holocaust, and will continue the fence mending at a Vatican meeting this week with Jewish officials. In Columbia, S.C., on Sept. 11, he will talk with an array of 27 leaders of non- Catholic churches, then join an ecumenical prayer service with 72,000 people...
Dismay and anger were the reactions of American Jews last June when Pope John Paul II welcomed Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican, despite accusations that the Austrian President had been involved in Nazi war crimes. The resulting controversy threatened to sour John Paul's nine-city trip to the U.S., which begins on Sept. 10. Jewish leaders in Los Angeles announced that they might boycott the Pope's scheduled interfaith celebrations. A more important Miami meeting between John Paul and American-Jewish leaders, intended to enhance relations, seemed doomed...
John Paul's statement, which makes no reference to the Waldheim audience, was a long-contemplated synthesis of his views on the Holocaust, said a Vatican official, "not a consequence of the Waldheim meeting." But it followed a July session in New York City between Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and representatives of American-Jewish organizations; they pressed for a statement as well as a meeting with John Paul before his visit to the U.S. That meeting is now set for next Tuesday with five or six Jewish leaders at the papal summer residence...
Some Jewish leaders would like the Pope to declare more explicitly that he understands why Jews were offended by his meeting with Waldheim. Nonetheless, few doubted that relations between the Vatican and Judaism were getting back on the right track. "Skeptics abound on both sides," says Rabbi Alan Mittleman, who recently published a study of John Paul's attitudes toward Jews. "But realists know that there is genuine improvement under...