Because of my long personal relationship with the Vatican, I can appreciate the fact that Benedict has embraced Israel’s legitimacy in a way none of us could have imagined in 1964 when Pope Paul VI visited the Holy Land and consciously refused to recognize the reality of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state. I remember sitting with the late Israeli president Zalman Shazar and becoming outraged when he pointed to a picture of that visit which the pope had inscribed to “His Excellency Zalman Shazar” – with no reference to the Jewish state or Jerusalem.
Yet four decades later, Pope Benedict XVI, leader of 1.5 billion Catholics, followed John Paul II: he prayed at the Kotel, laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, and condemned anti-Semitism. These symbolic gestures, unimaginable a short while ago, are an indication of the changes that have taken place as respect for Judaism and the Jewish people has replaced disdain.
Despite its checkered past, the Catholic Church has turned a corner in its relationship with the Jewish people – a reality that cannot overshadow words that some feel needed to be but were not spoken.