Pope Benedict XVI‘s Discourse to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

(February 12, 2009) American Jewish leaders met Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday for their first face-to-face talks since a furore erupted over a bishop who denies the Holocaust. Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who hosted the pope when he visited a synagogue in New York in April, said Wednesday that he plans to thank the pope for a commitment to strong Catholic-Jewish ties that Pope Benedict expressed to dampen the controversy over the bishop. Pope Benedict in turn said: “Now, I am glad to have this opportunity to offer you hospitality here in my own home. Such meetings as this enable us to demonstrate our respect for one another. I want you to know that you are all most welcome here today in the house of Peter, the home of the Pope.” Recalling his visits to Washington and elsewhere the Pope said: “It was very moving for me to spend those moments with the Jewish community in the city I know so well, the city which was home to the earliest Jewish settlement in Germany, its roots reaching back to the time of the Roman Empire.” He spoke of his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau camps in May 2006 and said “How can we begin to grasp the enormity of what took place in those infamous prisons? The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth.” Talking about his plan to visit Israel in the near future the Pope said “I too am preparing to visit Israel, a land which is holy for Christians as well as Jews, since the roots of our faith are to be found there. Indeed, the Church draws its sustenance from the root of that good olive tree, the people of Israel.” Pope Benedict then said: “The two-thousand-year history of the relationship between Judaism and the Church has passed through many different phases, some of them painful to recall. Now that we are able to meet in a spirit of reconciliation, we must not allow past difficulties to hold us back from extending to one another the hand of friendship.” In the context of Shoah the Pope said “It is beyond question that any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and altogether unacceptable.”