Italy's Jews divided over pope's synagogue visit

The president of Italy's assembly of rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, has already announced that he will shun the synagogue visit on Sunday.

ROME, January 15, 2010 (AFP) - Italy's Jewish community was divided Friday over an impending visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the city's main synagogue after he angered many by moving World War II-era pope Pius XII closer to sainthood.

Possibly adding fuel to the fire, the pontiff on Friday urged Vatican doctrinal experts to speed rapprochement with a Catholic fraternity that includes a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.

The president of Italy's assembly of rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, has already announced that he will shun the synagogue visit on Sunday.

"I'm afraid it will not have a positive effect on Jewish-Catholic dialogue," said the former chief rabbi of Milan.

Three days after the pope sparked anger among Jewish groups by bestowing the title "venerable" on the wartime pope, a necessary step towards beatification and eventual sainthood, the Vatican said the honour concerned Pius XII's piety and not his historical role.

Laras said he felt the explanation came up short and failed to show an "understanding of the feelings of the Jewish community."

However, Rome's Grand Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni sought to calm the waters, saying the visit was a sign that Benedict wants to "continue the dialogue".

Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, was also conciliatory, saying: "I have full understanding for the sensitivity of the survivors of the Holocaust, and we must respect this sensitivity."

He said the 82-year-old pope's synagogue visit would be aimed at seeking common ground, adding: "We have a new atmosphere with Judaism even if there are difficulties."

Renzo Gattegna, who heads the Union of Communities of Italian Jews, agreed that the visit should go forward despite the "protests and criticism."

But he added: "Still, it cannot be denied that some decisions taken by the current pope in 2009 led to moments of tension and concern on the Jewish side."

Gattegna listed the Pius XII and Williamson affairs as well as Benedict's decision to rehabilitate the Latin version of the Catholic Church's Good Friday mass, which contains a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.

Ordinary Jews were also divided on the visit. "My father-in-law died in a concentration camp. On Sunday I'm going to the club to watch the game," Angelo Sermoneta, 62, told the daily La Repubblica.

"Nothing ever changes between the Catholic Church and the Jews: with us they make one step forward and three steps back," he added.

But Luca Zevi, another resident of Rome's 'ghetto' -- a formerly walled-off district where Jews were segregated for two-and-a-half centuries -- said he would attend the event "even if the issue of Pius XII is disturbing.... The visit is a positive thing all the same."

On Friday, Benedict urged the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog to "overcome doctrinal problems that prevent full communion between the Church and the Pius X Society."

The Swiss-based fraternity rejected the 1965 Vatican II declaration absolving Jews of blame for Jesus' death, and their leader Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre ordained four bishops without Vatican blessing.

Benedict's predecessor John Paul II ex-communicated the four, who include Williamson of Britain.

Williamson has claimed that only between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews died before and during World War II.

A year ago, Benedict unleashed an outcry among Jews when he lifted Williamson's ex-communication as he began reaching out to the "Lefebvrists".

Catholic-Jewish relations have improved with a series of fence-mending statements and gestures by the Vatican and the pontiff, notably Benedict's trip to Israel in May last year during which he prayed at Jerusalem's Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall.