When Pope John Paul II steps into Rome`s central synagogue next month, not only will he be making amends for the anti-Semitism of some of his predecessors. He also will be taking the most important step in his ecumenical pilgrimage.
Both Vatican and Israeli officials quickly dismissed speculation last week that the April 13 visit might be a prelude to the Vatican extending diplomatic recognition to Israel. They agreed, however, that the papal gesture, probably the first time since the earliest days of the Roman Catholic Church that a pope ever has entered a synagogue, was an important step toward rapprochement between the church and the Jewish people.
”This gesture will go a long way in the direction of dialogue and will take us a long way from the old days,” Tullia Zevi, leader of Rome`s Jewish community, said.
The Vatican, although admitting the Pope had asked for the pilgrimage to the synagogue, was far more cautious. Said an official: ”The Holy Father has visited the temples of other religions. It is only just that he should also visit a synagogue.”
But behind the noncommittal air of the Holy See, where the visit is officially seen as part of the spirit of ecumenism, there also is a belief that John Paul`s request is yet another step toward preparing his church for a more active mediation role in the Middle East.
Though the Polish pontiff`s preoccupation with worldly affairs often is derided as ”medieval”–a reference to an era when popes made or unmade kings –the trend to act not merely as a spiritual guide has found a positive echo among the young hawks in the church, especially after the key role the church played in the demise of dictatorial regimes in Haiti and the Philippines.
In recent months, John Paul more than once has stressed the need for a fair settlement in the Mideast. He has received Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and, on two occasions, the Lebanese prime minister.
Not a man known to shun the political limelight, John Paul`s initiative has caused mixed reactions in Israel. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch said, ”The Pope visits the synagogue to score a political success, but not to pray.”
An Israeli Embassy official in Rome was more diplomatic: ”We do not see the visit as having any political significance. Still, it is a historic event which is more encouraging to Jews than to Israelis.”
The spokesman denied reports of secret talks on diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, although he agreed ”an ongoing dialogue”
already exists.
The Vatican has raised three obstacles to the recognition of Israel. The first is the somewhat dubious official explanation that the Vatican cannot recognize a country whose borders are not clearly defined. Secondly, the Vatican thinks the aspirations of the Palestinians must be settled before talks about diplomatic relations. Finally, the Vatican has lobbied Israel for years to give Jerusalem a special international status, a formula Israel bluntly rejects.
So the Pope`s unprecedented step must be seen for the moment as a papal effort to bridge the 2,000-year-old rift between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.
The chief rabbi of the Rome community, Elio Toaff, put it more poetically: ”To build an edifice of reciprocal understanding, one needs a lot of stones. In this case, the papal visit assumes the dimensions of a pillar.” Once inside the synagogue, one of three Orthodox synagogues in Rome, the Pope and the rabbi are expected to say a simple common prayer and meditate for a few minutes.
Of some concern is whether the pontiff will wear his cross, whose presence as a symbol of Christianity and therefore of anti-Jewish acts carried out in its name, would be deeply offensive to many Jews.
”We hope, as a sign of respect, he`ll leave it off,” one Jew said last week. The Pope`s white biretta, or mitre, will suffice as an obligatory headcover in a synagogue.
Still, the papal visit is charged with symbolism.
The synagogue gesture comes in the year the Pope has declared ”year of international peace” and six months before the pontiff holds a prayer for peace meeting at Assisi, in central Italy, to which exponents from all religions are invited.
Rome`s 20,000-member Jewish community, concentrated along the Tiber River below Capitol Hill, is the oldest in the Western world. Its first inhabitants were brought to Rome as slaves by the Emperor Titus in the year 70 B.C. after he had subdued the rebellious Jewish nation and sacked Jerusalem.
Rabbi Toaff, 71, who called the visit to his synagogue ”courageous,”
admitted that not everyone in his congregation is elated.
”Some can`t forget,” he said.
What they cannot forget is that until 1848 the popes who governed Rome made the rabbi of the Jewish community kneel before them on the last Sunday of carnival to offer a bouquet of flowers and an ”envelope” with money.
Having received this ”voluntary tax,” the governor of the city, in the presence of the pope, gave the rabbi the traditional ”kick in the pants”
with his booted foot.
”When one of my predecessors, the Rabbi Modigliani, begged to be exempted from this painful duty because he was too old and ill, the reply was, `Then send a younger man,` ” Rabbi Toaff recalled.
In Renaissance days, when popes ruled Rome with an iron fist, Jews were fed pasta, ordered to strip to the waist and whipped to make them run down the central Via del Corso to the delight of carnival crowds. The pontiff of the day usually watched from a balcony.
When popes made their triumphal entry into Rome after being chosen in conclave in the old days, they expected a garlanded Jew converted to Christianity to greet them from below the Arch of Titus, symbol of the subjugation of the Jewish people. The practice prompted a popular Roman saying, ”It`s always the same convert under the arch.”
The Fifth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that Jews must wear ”different dress” and should be accused of deicide, sacrilege and usury. The Council of Basel in 1434 established that Jews could not attend university and Jewish doctors could not treat Christians–though popes maintained an ambiguous relationship to their favorite Jews, using them both as personal doctors and bankers, despite the council`s ruling.
In 1555, Pope Paul IV decreed that all Jews must live in the ghetto of Rome, separate from Christians.
It was only 20 years ago that the Second Vatican Council abolished the accusation of deicide, arguing that Jews could not be held collectively responsible for the death of Christ. In 1959, Pope John XXIII, ”the good Pope” who once ran from his car to bless Jews coming out of a Rome synagogue, ordered his church to drop from the Good Friday liturgy the offensive phrase
”perfidious Jews” used by popes, bishops and priests for centuries to denounce Jews for having crucified Christ.
And for decades Jews have pointed the finger of accusation at Pope Pius XII for his failure to denounce the Nazi Holocaust. The Vatican has tried in vain to whitewash the image of Pius, who was the first Vatican nuncio in Berlin between 1920 and 1929 before he became pope.
In 1965, Pope Paul VI tried to defend Pius during a visit to the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem. He was jeered and insulted by the crowd.
Even the current Pope has not totally escaped the stigma of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Toaff told the story of a Polish priest who refused to baptize a child given to the care of a Catholic couple by a Jewish couple being deported to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
The priest said the child could not be baptized–and thus converted to Christianity–unless he was sure its parents were dead. The parents survived. They were located many years later in the United States.
The rabbi`s story left the question: Did the priest refuse baptism to save the child for its Jewish religion or was his action prompted by prejudice?
The name of the priest, the rabbi said, was Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II.
