Volume 47, Number 9 · May 25, 2000
The Vatican Regrets
By Garry Wills
Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 1999
by Rev. Christopher Begg, Msgr. Bruno Forte, Rev. Sebastian Karotemprel S.D.B., Msgr. Roland Minnerath, Rev. Thomas Norris, Rev. Rafael Salazar Cárdenas M.Sp.S., Msgr. Anton Strukelj. Issued from the Vatican by Cardinal Ratzinger of the Congregation. Available at www.vatican.va.
Pope John Paul II deserves great credit for his work to correct injustices inflicted by Catholics on those of other faiths. He has reached out not only to Jews but to Orthodox and Protestant Christians; but his greatest efforts, his repeated ones, have to do with the Jews. He has issued a statement, We Remember, lamenting the Holocaust and many Catholics' inadequate response to it. He publicly and ceremonially apologized to the Jews at a Lenten service this year. He visited a synagogue and in March visited Israel and manifested sincere anguish at what Jews have suffered. There are many signs that these moves have had their desired effect. One indication of that comes from two articles by the Israeli novelist Amos Oz in the Italian paper Corriere della Sera, one just before the Pope's trip to Israel and one during it.
Review, 1998 words
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