IL
5
Faithful Move
Drivers
wanted.
Accord to review Vatican material
seen by Jews as a "useful first step.
RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Rome
T
he Vatican and an interna-
tional committee of Jewish
leaders have agreed to set
up a team of Jewish and
Catholic scholars to review published
Vatican archival material relating to
World War II.
The move, announced Tuesday,
stops short of complying with long-
standing. Jewish demands that the
Vatican open its wartime archives to
outside researchers in order, among
other things, to clarify the actions of
the wartime pope, Pius XII.
Controversy over the wartime role
of the church, and particularly of Pius
XII, has been highlighted recently, in
part because of possible plans by the
Vatican to beatify Pius.
In addition, a new book about Pius
by British historian John Cornwell,
Hitler's Pope, uses documentary evi-
dence to show that Pius was an anti-
Semite who facilitated Hitler's rise to
power.
Seymour Reich, chairman of the
International Jewish Committee on
Interreligious Consultations, known as
the IJCIC, welcomed the agreement as
"a useful first step in resolving the
matter of the Vatican's role during
World War II."
He and others said the move is sig-
nificant because the committee will
have the imprimatur of the Vatican
and ultimately could lead to the access
of secret wartime archives.
It would also, Reich said, aid in
resuming the Catholic-Jewish dia-
logue that has helped advance the
evolving relationship between our two
faiths in recent decades."
The agreement was announced
after a more than three-hour meet-
ing at the Vatican Monday between
Reich and Cardinal Edward Cassidy,
president of the Vatican's
Commission for Religious Relations
with the Jews.
A statement issued Tuesday said a
team of three Jewish and three
Catholic scholars will be named soon.
Their duty will be to examine 11 vol-
umes of Vatican archival material pub-
,
C'
lished between 1965 and 1981 that
relate to the church's role during
World War II. But the scholars also
will be empowered to seek clarification
from other sources on questions left
open by these documents.
Reich said the IJCIC still wants the
Vatican archives to be opened, but
would not press on this matter while
the review process is going on. "At the
moment we agree that this approach is
best," he said. "It's a useful first step
toward arriving at what we want."
On the question of the beatification
of Pius XII, Reich said that although
nothing was stated explicitly, he got
the sense that "there was no rush" on
the Vatican's part to beatify Pius.
For his part, Cassidy expressed "sat-
isfaction" at the agreement and said he
was "convinced that what is needed in
this connection is a joint study by
competent Jewish and Catholic schol-
ars of the available documents from
the troubled period of the Second
World War."
The IJCIC is the main institutional
Jewish partner in formal dialogue with
the Vatican. Its membership includes the
American Jewish Committee, B'nai
B'rith International, the Israel Jewish
Council on Interreligious
Consultations, the World Jewish
Congress and representative bodies of
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform
Jewry. For a variety of reasons, the
body has all but ceased activities in
recent years.
Reich said the meeting with
Cassidy — believed to be the first sub-
stantive meeting by IJCIC leaders and
Cassidy since the March 1998 session
— got formal interfaith dialogue
"back on track."
Last February, Cassidy shook up
the interfaith community by declaring
that the IJCIC essentially was "no
longer in existence."
In speeches, he complained that
"aggressive" anti-church attitudes by
some Jewish organizations threatened
Jewish-Catholic relations and said an
"uncertain atmosphere" was "beginning
to cloud over our present relationship."
Reich said the concerns Cassidy
expressed were a "wake-up call" that
pushed IJCIC member groups to
revive the body's operations. ❑
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