Pope meets with chief rabbis of Jerusalem.

Vatican -- Pope Benedict is continuing the steps towards building deeper religious relations between Christians and Jews. On September 15, 2005, he met with the two chief rabbis of Israel--Shlomo Moshe Amar and Yona Metzger. He reiterated comments he had made in his World Youth Day address at the Cologne synagogue (see below) that Nostra aetate had proven to be "a milestone on the road towards reconciliation of Christians with the Jewish people."

The rabbis requested that the Pope proclaim October 18--the date of the publication of Nostra aetate in 1965--as a "day dedicated to the teaching of that document and to the struggle against anti-Semitism in the Catholic world."

The rabbis also used the occasion to invite Pope Benedict to visit the Holy Land, a gesture that supported the invitation previously made by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (from Zenit files).

Earlier during World Youth Day in Cologne in August, the Pope visited a Jewish synagogue and, in his address to some 500 Jewish representatives, said that he "intends to continue ... on the path toward improved relations and friendship with the Jewish people." This was only the second occasion in modern times that a pope has entered a Jewish place of worship. Pope John Paul II visited Rome's chief synagogue in 1986.

The Pope noted that 2005 marked the fortieth anniversary of Nostra aetate, the Vatican Council II declaration that "opened up new prospects for Jewish-Christian relations in terms of dialogue and solidarity" and that "deplores feelings of hatred, persecutions and demonstrations of anti-Semitism."

Benedict remarked that much progress had been made towards better and closer relations between Jews and Christians in the past 40 years, but that more work needed to be done through sincere and trustful dialogue, for only then would there be meaningful progress "toward a theological evaluation of a relationship between Judaism and Christianity" (Zenit).

In his homily at the open-air mass in Cologne at World Youth Day, Pope Benedict warned Europe against growing secularism and do-it-yourself religion. He claimed that, "pushed too far, religion becomes almost a consumer product" (Toronto Star, August 22, 2005).