Context crucial in Vatican-Israel uproar

National Catholic Reporter, August 12, 2005 by John L. Allen, Jr.

Last week's acrid exchange between Israel and the Vatican over supposed papal silences on anti-Israeli terrorism illustrates that while Catholics and Jews have arrived at high levels of agreement theologically, on other more political fronts old frustrations and suspicions lie just below the surface.

Context is essential to understanding the uproar, and the tough Israeli position doesn't make sense apart from historic suspicions about papal silences, related both to debates over Pins XII and the Holocaust, and to more recent concerns that Vatican diplomacy in the Holy Land tilts towards the Palestinians.

On the Vatican side, frustration with the Israelis has multiple roots, but one is the failure to come to agreement on the financial and juridical status of church-run institutions in Israel. Those issues were supposed to be resolved swiftly after the 1993 Fundamental Agreement, in which the Vatican recognized the state of Israel. Instead, the issues have lingered for 11 years.

Both parties, therefore, sometimes have a quick trigger when it comes to the other.

Experts caution, however, that diplomatic tensions between the Holy See and Israel should not be confused with the relationship between Judaism and the Catholic church, which made great strides under John Paul II, and which should receive another boost when Pope Benedict XVI visits a synagogue in Cologne, Germany, later this month.

The current story began July 24, when Pope Benedict XVI, during his Angelus address from his vacation spot in the mountains of northern Italy, expressed condolences for recent terrorist incidents in Great Britain, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, but not Israel, where five people died July 14 after a bombing in Netanya.

Angered by the omission, the Israeli foreign ministry summoned the papal nuncio in Jerusalem, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, for an explanation. An Israeli spokesperson said the silence "cries out to heaven" for explanation.

The Vatican issued a statement saying, in effect, that the pope had explicitly referred only to events of the past week, but in a more general sense his condemnation of terrorism included what happened in Netanya as well.

The event might have remained a minor diplomatic flap, except that an official of the Israeli government, Nimrod Barkan, head of the foreign ministry's World Jewish Affairs section, gave an interview to The Jerusalem Post July 26. Barkan asserted that Pope John Paul II had frequently failed to denounce terrorism against Israel, and that the Israelis had repeatedly asked him to intervene.

That produced a stinging July 28 statement from the Vatican Press Office, stating that claims of such Israeli requests to the late pope were "invented," and that just as the Israelis don't take orders from anyone on what they should' say, neither does the Vatican.

The statement added for good measure that terrorist attacks have sometimes been followed by Israeli reprisals "not always compatible with international norms. It would thus have been impossible to condemn the former and remain silent about the latter."

A lengthy attached note cited repeated instances when John Paul II had spoken about terrorism directed at Israel.

Ricardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, quickly told Italian reporters that "when the church speaks" on such matters, it does so "not as a moral authority, but a political force."

Di Segni expressed the hope that Benedict XVI, who knows theology very well, "will quickly learn politics too."

Not every Jewish leader, however, joined the criticism.

Gary Krupp, president of the New York-based Pave the Way Foundation, said he had asked the pope to grant him and other Jewish leaders an audience to tell Benedict "that we do believe that the pope is enormously supportive of the Jewish people and the state of Israel."

One bit of insider subtext to the Vatican-Israel story is that although the sharply worded July 28 declaration and note appeared under the aegis of the Vatican Press Office, sources told NCR July 30 that it was not the director of the press office, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who wrote them.

In fact, Navarro-Valls, according to the sources, saw the statement for the first time on the airplane that carried Benedict XVI and his party back to Rome from his vacation spot in Val d'Aosta on the afternoon of July 28.

Instead, sources say, the documents were prepared by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, an official in the Secretariat of State who is in effect the pope's foreign minister. Privately, some Vatican officials have asked if the texts were an overreaction, given that The Jerusalem Post interview was with a deputy in the Israeli foreign ministry, rather than the prime minister or foreign minister themselves.

Because the statement was released by the Vatican Press Office, Navarro-Valls has come in for criticism as its presumptive author. Di Segni, for example, said that "we recognized certain tones already familiar from Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who usually is discourteous and tough with us."

On July 29, officials of the Anti-Defamation League wrote to Navarro-Valls to protest. "We are especially troubled by your most recent assertion that 'Israeli reactions [are] not always compatible with the rules of international law,' "they wrote.