May 22



VATICAN CITY:

Jews Seen Softening Stand on WWII Vatican Archives


International Jewish leaders on Thursday appeared to have softened their
demands on the Vatican over the opening of secret archives from World War
II and said they were seeing eye to eye with Pope John Paul.

Many Jewish groups have accused wartime Pope Pius XII, who reigned from
1939 to 1958, of doing too little to stop the Holocaust. They oppose
efforts to make him a saint.

In the past, Jewish leaders visiting the Vatican made firm demands that
the archives be opened speedily.

But after a private audience with the pope on Thursday, World Jewish
Congress (WJC) chairman Israel Singer said they were seeing eye to eye on
the archives issue.

``I wouldn't normally say this, but we agreed on everything,'' he said in
a telephone interview.

The Jewish leaders said before the audience that they now better
appreciated the complexities of opening archives and did not want the
issue to block progress on inter-faith dialogue that has improved
tremendously in the past 40 years.

Singer said WJC President Edgar Bronfman raised the archives issue with
the pope during the meeting.

``We did this in a friendly way. We were encouraging them to open the
archives, but it's not like we came in with an aggressive approach. We
came in with a negotiated approach,'' he said.

Singer said archives relating to Pius XII's papacy may start being opened
to scholars between 2005 and 2007 in phases.

A Vatican official said no new timetable had been set during the meeting.
He said much work was still needed to organize the archives and other
files had to be made public first.

In February, the Vatican opened archives on its relations with pre-war
Germany six years ahead of schedule.

They included documents from 1922 to 1939 when Eugenio Pacelli, who later
became Pius XII, was ambassador to Berlin and then the Vatican's secretary
of state.

The Vatican will next declassify the rest of the archives from that period
and only then is it expected to move on to Pius XII's papacy.

In his address to the leaders, the pope praised Catholic-Jewish relations
but did not mention archives.

(source: Reuters)