New pope hailed for strong Jewish ties

By David Brinn

The choice of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope on Tuesday, Jewish religious leaders say, is a sign that the warming ties initiated by Pope John Paul II between the Vatican and Jews will continue.

The Roman Catholic Church's leading conservative, the German Ratzinger was elected the new pope in the first conclave of the new millennium by cardinals intent on sticking to conservative policy. Ratzinger is the first Germanic pope in roughly 1,000 years.

"His election is confirmation of the cardinals on the issue of continuity," Rabbi David Rosen told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday. "There's not a single issue in which the new pope will not be in complete accord with his predecessor. After all, his predecessor appointed him to the most important theological post in the Catholic Church.

"This continuity will be reflected in Catholic-Jewish relations. He has a deep commitment to this issue. And his own national background makes him sensitive to the dangers of anti-Semitism and the importance of Jewish-Catholic reconciliation," said Rosen, the international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

"He was also supportive of the establishment of full relations between the Holy See and Israel, and he cares deeply about the welfare of the State of Israel," added Rosen.

Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, called Ratzinger 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.

In one indication of his respect for Judaism, Ratzinger authorized in 2002 the publication of a report that stated that "the Jewish messianic wait is not in vain." That document also expressed regret that certain passages in the Christian Bible condemning individual Jews have been used to justify anti-Semitism.

The 210-page document, titled "The Jewish People and the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible," says Jews and Christians share their wait for the Messiah, although Jews are waiting for the first coming and Christians for the second.

Upon his election, Ratzinger chose the name Pope Benedict XVI and called himself "a simple, humble worker." He emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, where he waved to a wildly cheering crowd of tens of thousands and gave his first blessing as pope. Other cardinals, clad in their crimson robes, came out on other balconies to watch him after one of the fastest papal conclaves of the past century.

Pilgrims chanted "Benedict! Benedict!" as the church's 265th pontiff appeared.

"Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me – a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord," he said after being introduced by Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estivez.

The new pope had gone into the conclave with the most buzz among two dozen leading candidates. He had impressed many faithful with his stirring homily at the funeral of John Paul II, who died on April 2 at age 84.

White smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel and bells tolled earlier to announce the conclave had produced a pope. Flag-waving pilgrims in St. Peter's Square chanted: "Viva il Papa!" or "Long live the pope!" The bells rang after a confusing smoke signal that Vatican Radio initially suggested was black but then declared was too difficult to call. White smoke is used to announce a pope's election to the world.

It was one of the fastest elections in the past century.

"It's only been 24 hours, surprising how fast he was elected," Vatican Radio said, commenting on how the new pope was elected after just four or five ballots.

The timing, more than one hour before the end of the afternoon session, indicated that the pontiff may have been chosen on the fourth ballot, although it was not immediately known. Voting began Monday night with a single ballot, and there were two ballots to be held Tuesday morning and afternoon.

The cardinals took an oath of secrecy, meaning they are forbidden to divulge how the voting went. Under conclave rules, a winner needs two-thirds support, or 77 votes from the 115 cardinal electors.

Niels Hendrich, a 40-year-old salesman from Hamburg, Germany, jumped up and down with joy at St. Peter's and called his father on a cell phone. "Habemus papam!" he shouted into the phone, using the Latin for: "We have a pope."

Some have questioned whether the new pope was pro-Nazi during his teenage years in Germany during World War II.

In his memoirs, the new pope speaks openly of being enrolled in Hitler's Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He writes that he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.

Two years later, he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. Enrolled as a soldier at 18, in the last months of the war, he barely finished basic training.

Ratzinger has several times gone on record about his "problematic" past. In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger is asked if he was ever in the Hitler Youth.

"At first we weren't," he says, speaking of himself and his older brother. "But when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later as a seminarian I was registered in the Hitler Youth. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back. And that was difficult because the tuition reduction, which I really needed, was tied to proof of attendance at the Hitler Youth.

"Thank goodness there was a very understanding mathematics professor. He himself was a Nazi, but an honest man, and said to me, 'Just go once to get the document so we have it...' When he saw that I simply didn't want to, he said, 'I understand, I'll take care of it' and so I was able to stay free of it."

In Traunstein, the southern German town where the pope had studied for the priesthood decades before, 13-year-old boys at St. Michael's seminary jumped up and down, cheered and clapped as the news was announced.

"It's fantastic that it's Cardinal Ratzinger. I met him when he was here before and I found him really nice," said Lorenz Gradl, 16, who was confirmed by Ratzinger in 2003.

"We are certain that he will continue on the path of reconciliation between Christians and Jews that John Paul II began," Paul Spiegel, head of Germany's main Jewish organization, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Throughout his service in the church, Ratzinger has distinguished himself in the field of Jewish-Catholic relations. As prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger played an instrumental role in the Vatican's revolutionary reconciliation with the Jews under John Paul II. He personally prepared Memory and Reconciliation, the 2000 document outlining the church's historical "errors" in its treatment of Jews.

Abraham H. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League National Director, said that having lived through World War II, Ratzinger has great sensitivity to Jewish history and the Holocaust.

"He has shown this sensitivity countless times, in meetings with Jewish leadership and in important statements condemning anti-Semitism and expressing profound sorrow for the Holocaust. We remember with great appreciation his Christmas reflections on December 29, 2000, when he memorably expressed remorse for the anti-Jewish attitudes that persisted through history, leading to 'deplorable acts of violence' and the Holocaust.

"Cardinal Ratzinger said: 'Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah (Holocaust) was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.'"

Ratzinger's grasp of Judaism is reflected by this passage from that document.

"I think we could say that two things are essential to Israel's faith. The first is the Torah, commitment to God's will, and thus the establishment of his dominion, his kingdom, in this world. The second is the prospect of hope, the expectation of the Messiah – the expectation, indeed the certainty, that God himself will enter into this history and create justice, which we can only approximate very imperfectly. The three dimensions of time are thus connected: obedience to God's will bears on an already spoken word that now exists in history and at each new moment has to be made present again in obedience. This obedience, which makes present a bit of God's justice in time, is oriented toward a future when God will gather up the fragments of time and usher them as a whole into his justice."

Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks congratulated Ratzinger on his election Tuesday, saying, "We hope that he will continue along the path of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II in working to enhance relations with the Jewish people and the State of Israel."