jerusalem | Jewish politicians and rabbis praised new Pope Benedict XVI for his strong condemnations of anti-Semitism — despite the pontiff’s ties to the Nazi Party as a youth.
Benedict, whose birth name is Joseph Ratzinger, served in the Hitler Youth during World War II when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography. The book says he was never a member of the Nazi Party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler’s regime.
In recent times he used his position as the Vatican’s chief theologian under John Paul II to play an instrumental part in his predecessor’s historic rapprochement with the Jews. In 2000, under Benedict’s editorial direction, the Vatican released “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” a watershed document that acknowledged church errors in its past dealings with Jews, asking “whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts.”
Nevertheless, the pope’s German past sets off alarm bells for some Israelis, whose memories of the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews remain painfully vivid. Some wondered whether he would embrace Jews as warmly as his predecessor.
Oded Ben-Hor, Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican, is not one of them. He assured Army Radio, “There are good relations with him. Israel can certainly coexist with him. But the real test will come over the course of time.”
Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor and a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi, said his many meetings with Benedict while he was a cardinal have convinced him of his good record on matters of concern to Israelis.
Their last meeting was last year, in New York, “in the Museum of Jewish Heritage of all places,” Lau told Israel Army Radio. “There was a meeting of two or three rabbis with some 20 cardinals. … His entire speech was given over to a condemnation of anti-Semitism, in the strongest and most unambiguous terms.”
In the United States, most Jewish groups also embraced the new pontiff.
“Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman himself was saved during the Holocaust by his Polish nanny, who had him baptized and raised him as a Catholic, until his Jewish parents reclaimed him at the end of the war.
Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, said Benedict had been instrumental in improving relations between Catholics and Jews under John Paul II.
“He is the architect of the policy that John Paul II fulfilled with regard to relations with the Jews. He is the architect of the ideological policy to recognize, to have full relations with Israel,” Singer said. “He was the ideologist behind the last pope — the theologist and the ideologist.”
Benedict oversaw the 2002 publication of “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures,” which asserted that “the Jewish messianic wait is not in vain” and expressed regret that certain passages in the Christian Bible condemning individual Jews have been used to justify anti-Semitism.
Despite his stern religious bearing, those who know him say his intelligence, patience and personality make him good company.
“As far as Jewish people are concerned, Cardinal Ratzinger is a friend,” said Gary Krupp, president and founder of the Pave the Way Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes religious understanding. “He is going to be as effective, if not more, than John Paul II” in furthering Catholic-Jewish relations. “He’s not going to backtrack. I think he’s going to be advancing these causes even further.”
He’s very, very sweet, very pleasant, very cordial and friendly,” said Krupp, who met the cardinal at his Vatican offices in early February. After Krupp accidentally missed an earlier meeting, the cardinal brushed the oversight aside.
“‘Don’t worry about it, it was just a mistake,’ ” Krupp recalled him saying.
Born in Marktl am Inn, Germany, in 1927, Benedict was ordained in 1951 and received his doctorate in theology in 1953, then taught theology and dogma at a series of German universities.
He was appointed bishop of Munich in 1977 and was promoted to cardinal by then-Pope Paul VI after just three months.
Since 1981, he has led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he was responsible for enforcing church doctrine. He became known in this role for his conservative views, upsetting some Catholics with his vocal opposition to religious pluralism and liberation theology.
JTA and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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