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Pope: Catholics, Jews can cooperate in 3 key areas
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Pope Benedict XVI has proposed that the Church and the Jewish People, holding the Ten Commandments in common, could cooperate in three main areas that are especially important in today’s world.
Heading the list was the need to witness to the reality of the one God and to reawaken in society an openness to God.
"In our world there are many who do not know God or who consider him superfluous, without relevance for their lives," said Benedict. "Hence, other new gods have been fabricated to whom man bows down."
Then came respect for human life, and thirdly, the need to promote the sacredness of the family "in which the faithful and definitive ‘Yes’ of man and woman makes room for the future."
The Pope made his remarks during his recent very delicate trip to the Jewish synagogue in Rome where he told a gathering of 1,500 people of his and the Church’s "esteem and affection" for the Jewish community.
Among those welcoming the Holy Father was Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome’s Jewish Community. He said the only reason he was born was because his father had been hidden by nuns in a convent in Florence.
He noted that thousands of Catholics helped Jews, stressing that they did so "without asking for anything in return." He then spoke about Pope Pius XII’s supposed "silence".
If Pius had spoken out more loudly, he said, "maybe he would not have been able to stop the death trains, but he would have sent a signal, a word of comfort, of human solidarity, for our brothers and sisters who were transported to the chimneys of Auschwitz."
He made no mention of Pius’s well-founded fear that if he spoke out he would jeopardise the whole Catholic rescue operation which saved some 800,000 Jews, including Pacifici’s own father, from the Nazis.
Benedict, however, gently balanced the account. "Many," he said, "including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives.
"They opened their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earned perennial gratitude. The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way."
After the Pope’s visit, Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, told reporters: "I think the speech calmed the atmosphere," which was tense after Pope Benedict advanced the cause of Pope Pius. "My first reaction is decisively positive," said the rabbi.
Pope Benedict XVI talks with Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, during his recent visit to Rome’s main synagogue.
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