The Pope's visit

Pope Benedict has started his tour of the Middle East. I believe that this will be another missed opportunity. As a Jew, I have no right to tell Catholics who they can or cannot elect to their highest positions. I do fear however that efforts to improve relations with the Church will take a step backward.

60+ years ago, Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, was a young man growing up in Nazi Germany. Ratzinger joined the SS youth organization (Hitler Youth), and postponed theology school to become an officer in Hitler's army supervising Jewish slave labor maintaining an anti aircraft battery which guarded the Mercedes Benz plant. When the allies occupied the city, Mr Ratzinger was on a list of wanted war criminals. He was accused of brutal treatment and murder of Jewish laborers. Ratzinger rose through the ranks of the Catholic church through the assistance of a fellow German speaking Catholic Kurt Waldheim. Waldheim, later the Secretary General of the UN, was banned from the US for crimes committed against the Serbians and Jews. Waldheim had a close association with Mufti El Husseini, who was a principle author with Adolf Eichmann of Hitler's Final Solution of Jews.

As Pope, Ratzinger quickly returned the Church to Replacement Theology which says that Jews are eternally damned for the crime of deicide. Excuses were made, which satisfied Jewish leaders. Pope Pius the 12th was made a hero of the Church. Pius refused to condemn the Shoah resulting in the worst slaughter against my people occurring in Catholic countries (Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, France). Holocaust revisionists were also returned to high posts within the Church (Bishop Williams). The Vatican sent a delegation to the Durban ll conference listening to Iran's Achmadinjad as the Iranian loudmouth denied the Holocaust, and promised that the Jewish people will be exterminated.

As stated above, the Pope is now on a Middle East tour. Rather than using this opportunity to apologize for his role in the slaughter, he is scheduling meetings with those denying that the slaughter actually occurred. This actually makes Joseph Ratzinger doubly guilty of this crime.

Previously, we had a pope named John Paul ll. Pope John risked his life in saving Jews during the Shoah. He respected our religion by insuring that saved Jewish children continue their lives as Jews. John Paul ll visited synagogues and Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, calling us our "older brothers." He recognized that the Jews gave Christians their holy books, prophets, and even their God. John Paul of saintly memory, was a hero to all of us. Let the memory of his deeds not be stored away in some Vatican vault. Jews and Catholics need to stand together and demand that the church not be returned to the days of Queen Isabella, King John of Portugal (banished my ancestors), and Torquemada. In Jewish Midrashim and Kabbalah (Zohar), the Catholic church are the descendants of Essau. Essau in a bloodlust sold his legacy to Jacob, and tried to kill his twin brother. Essau at the end of his life, kissed his brother, and promised to reunite with Jacob to return the world to paradise at the end of days. Let us hope that we see the later Essau instead of the former.