NEW YORK For 90 minutes Tuesday, six U.S. Jewish leaders andPope John Paul II will sit down in an unusual "heart-to heart"meeting that could decide how Jews react to the pontiff's visit tothe United States.
There is no formal agenda for the unprecedented discussion atthe pope's Castelgandolfo summer residence. Both Catholic and Jewishleaders hope the meeting will usher in an era of reconciliationbetween two groups whose history has long been tangled and tortured.
In an indication of its importance, the pope is interrupting hisvacation and has scheduled the meeting at a residence outsidersrarely see, allocating more time for it than even American presidentsreceive in papal audiences.
Jewish leaders, as well, think the meeting could be historiceven as they note its irony. The meeting comes as a direct result oftheir outcry over the pope's audience last June with AustrianPresident Kurt Waldheim, a man derided by Jewish leaders as "anunrepentant Nazi" who covered up his wartime past in the German army.
The Waldheim audience, in which the pope praised the Catholicformer UN secretary-general as a man of peace, triggered fury in theworld Jewish community.
Jews, especially in the United States - home to the largest andmost affluent Jewish community in the world - began dwelling on oldand new sores as if "the friend of my enemy is my enemy."
They denounced the Vatican for its silence about the fate ofJews during World War II, the pope for attempting to minimize Jewishsuffering in the Holocaust, for his references to the Jews killingChrist and for saying that the Roman Catholic Church was a "newIsrael" replacing the old.
They even threatened to boycott a largely ceremonial audiencewith the pope set for Sept. 11 in Miami, an event that would forcethe pontiff to start his nine-day U.S. tour on a sour note.
Relations between American Catholics and Jews, according tospokesmen for both groups, is unusually strong with Jews often majorcontributors to Catholic causes, including fund-raising for the papalvisit. Jewish donations to finance the papal trip dried up after theWaldheim visit.
"The outcry was sincere and very loud," said Eugene Fisher,executive secretary of the U.S. Bishops Conference's Secretariat onCatholic-Jewish relations. "Unfortunate things were said on bothsides. A number of things need to be cleared up.
"The whole notion of the pope's relations with Jews gotdistorted. This pope has spoken more powerfully aboutCatholic-Jewish relations than any other," he added.
For Fisher, the pope's record is being distorted in anacrimonious debate filled with "nice rhetoric but lousy history."
Reuters obtained a confidential agenda prepared by Jewishleaders who will be meeting the pope. The agenda says they plan toconfront the pontiff with what they see as his effort to revise thehistory of the Holocaust by minimizing Jewish suffering under theNazis.
The agenda chides the pope for visiting the Majdanekconcentration camp in his native Poland last May and for mentioning14 nationalities who died there but not the hundreds of thousands ofJews murdered there as well.
As the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel, a survivor of twoconcentration camps, has said, "We Jews do not claim to have sufferedalone. As I've often repeated, not all victims were Jews, but allJews were victims."
The Polish-born pope, who himself lived under Nazi terror,attempted to defuse that criticism.
He sent an emotion-laden letter to John Cardinal May of St.Louis last week in which he declared, "There is no doubt that thesufferings endured by the Jews are also for the Catholic Church amotive of sincere sorrow."
The U.S. Jewish leaders say they also plan to bring up what theydescribe as an outburst of anti-Semitism in largely Catholic Austria,Catholic theology on Jews and the Vatican's refusal to recognizeIsrael even though the Jewish state has been in existence for 40years.
A delegation of 10 U.S. Jewish leaders are going to Rome and sixwill be chosen to talk to the pope.
Jewish leaders say the real reason is Vatican fear of reprisalsagainst Christians in Arab lands if it sends an ambassador to Israel.
Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, one of the Jewish leaders expected to seethe pope next week, warns Jews not to have "inflated expectations"about the meeting.
"It won't bring the messiah before his time. But it is highlyunusual, a symbol for the good."
It will be, he said, "a man-to-man, heart-to-heart" encounter."
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