c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Pope John Paul II’s moves to make saints of Roman Catholics suspected of anti-Semitism and martyrs who were born Jewish but converted to Catholicism are creating”problems”in the Catholic-Jewish relationship despite the pontiff’s unprecedented attempts to end 2,000 years of church hostility towards Jews, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Friday (Dec. 4).

Foxman, on a four-day visit to Israel, also said the ADL had offered to provide”sensitivity training”to Catholics and Israelis who will be involved in preparations for the year 2000, which is expected to generate an unprecedented flow of Christian pilgrims to Israel. “This whole issue of sanctification and beatification has become a problem in our relationship,”Foxman said in a meeting with a small group of reporters, noting the ADL had taken issue with three such recent moves.

Those include reports the Vatican wants to”fast track”the canonization of Pope Pius XII, despite questions regarding his possible World War II collaboration with the Nazis; the October beatification of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the wartime Croatian nationalist cardinal suspected of collaborating with the Nazis, and the canonization of Edith Stein, the Jewish-born nun who converted to Catholicism and died in Auschwitz.”There is an irony in terms of what is going on with Jewish-Catholic relations,”said Foxman.”We are in an era when the relationship is the best it has been in 2,000 years. The efforts at reconciliation have been phenomenal _ from calling anti-Semitism a sin to lighting Hanukkah candles in the Vatican last year, the `firsts’ are incredible. “But at the same time we have experienced these three areas of tension,”he added.

Foxman called on the church to fully open up the Vatican’s World War II archives _ especially any records involving Pius XII’s World War II activities _ prior to promoting him to sainthood. “If you declare someone a saint, this means that you have already come to a judgment in what he did,”said Foxman.”We wouldn’t challenge the infallibility of the pope on questions relating to Christians, but this affects us (Jews).” (Even as Foxman was speaking in Jerusalem, however, the Vatican strongly denied it is withholding from historians key documents relating to the Holocaust and to gold the Nazis looted from their Jewish victims.

RNS Vatican correspondent Peggy Polk reported that spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls challenged critics of the Vatican to offer”concrete evidence”that the archives contain any important unpublished information on the Holocaust era.”The exhaustive examination of the documents in the Vatican Archives permits the affirmation that there is nothing _ I repeat: nothing _ to add to what has already been published,”the spokesman said.

Navarro-Valls’ comments were made in response to a charge by Lord Janner, head of Britain’s Holocaust Educational Trust, that the Vatican had refused his repeated requests to open all its archives on the period.

Janner made his remarks during a 44-nation conference in Washington, including representatives of the Vatican, on the recovery of Nazi-looted art and other valuables.)

Stein’s canonization, Foxman said, sends a message to the world that”the Jews who convert and die have a higher status”than Jews who perished as Jews at Nazi hands. Instead of making a saint of a convert, Foxman said the church should honor Christians who risked their lives saving Jews from the Nazis.

Foxman noted that he was saved from the Holocaust by a Lithuanian Catholic priest who protected his true identity by baptizing him.”Pope John Paul II has done so much to reconcile the Jewish people to the church and yet we have still not resolved the issue of the church and the Holocaust,”said Foxman, adding that some of the recent church moves might be seen as an attempt to”universalize”the Holocaust and deny the fact that Jews in particular were singled out by the Nazis as victims _ sometimes, he said, with church acquiescence.

In his remarks on the forthcoming Christian millennium, Foxman said the ADL had offered its services to the Vatican to conduct”sensitivity training programs”for Catholic leaders and tour guides who will be involved in pilgrimages to Israel to celebrate the Year 2000. He said such training would aim to introduce Christians to the”living Israel and living Judaism.” DEA END FLETCHER