Jewish leaders to confront Pope

by our Rome correspondent
FIVE leaders of America's powerful Jewish community will discuss their anger at the Pope's meeting with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim when they visit the Pontiff at his summer retreat on Tuesday.
The five will spend 90 minutes with John Paul at Castel Gandolfo in an attempt to smooth the waters before his forthcoming ten day trip to North America. Jewish groups have threatened to boycott a scheduled meeting with John Paul in Miami because of his June 25 encounter with Waldheim, accused of Nazi war crimes.
In advance of the visit, the Pope has sent a letter to Archbishop John May of St Louis in which he urged every effort to put aside past misunderstandings and improve Catholic-Jewish relations.
"No-one can ignore the suffering (of the Holocaust)" the Pope said in his three page letter, released to the press by the American archbishop. "There is no doubt that the sufferings of the Jews are a motive of profound pain for the Catholic Church, especially when one thinks of the indifference and sometimes resentment which, in particular historical circumstances, have divided Jews and Christians".
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee has welcomed the papal letter and the forthcoming meeting at Castel Gandolfo as making it possible, for the first time, to engage in an in-depth dialogue on Catholic-Jewish relations, and the fundamental misunderstangings that divide the two faiths.
Principal among such matters would be to discuss the Catholic Church's attitude to antisemitism during the second World War, American Jewish groups have made clear.