THE LATE POPE'S RELATIONSHIP WITH JUDAISM is the subject of a thoughtful Reuters article ("John Paul forged historic reconciliation with Jews"). Excerpt:

In 1986, in Rome, he became the first Pope to enter a synagogue. In 1994, he established full diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel, a step widely regarded as removing any theological opposition to the existence of modern Israel.

Clarifying an ancient misunderstanding, the Pope also said God had not broken his covenant with the Jews by creating the new covenant with Christians. This repudiated an old Christian view that Jews had "missed the boat" by failing to recognise Jesus as the Messiah and so their souls would not be saved.

The forging of ties was followed by a week-long pilgrimage to Israel in 2000 that touched on issues ranging from the quest for Middle East peace to the horrors of the Holocaust and the search for religious tolerance and understanding.

"Israelis were so impressed by his amicability and felt almost as if he were a relative," Aharon Lopez, a former Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, said of the visit.

Jewish leaders elsewhere were equally impressed. "Of all the popes in history, John Paul II is the one who understood Jews the best," said Theo Klein, a former head of the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF.

Despite the distance crossed by Pope John Paul, hurdles remained in the Vatican's relationship with Israel and the Jewish people, specifically the slow pace of opening Vatican archives to Holocaust researchers and the beatification of Pius.

Lopez said much education was needed to remove the "teaching of contempt" in the Church, while adding that John Paul's papacy had brought the Jewish people's relationship with the Catholic Church to a "point of no return".

"Under the circumstances he went a very far distance, more than any other pope, perhaps because of his acquaintance with Jews and the fact that he lived through the Holocaust where he did," Lopez said.

And this article has more:

Pontiff reached out to other faiths

BY RON GROSSMAN

Chicago Tribune

(KRT) - When John Paul II stepped across the threshold of the Great Synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986, it marked a milestone analogous to Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. If not quite "a giant leap for mankind," it certainly was for the two faiths involved.

For almost 2,000 years, the popes and the heart of Rome's Jewish community literally had been neighbors. Only a short distance separates Vatican City and Temple Israeletico. Yet until then, no pope had ever entered the synagogue.

[...]

In 1994, he dispatched the first Vatican ambassador to Israel, four decades after other countries established diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. When his predecessor Paul VI visited the Holy Land in 1964, he studiously avoided even using the world "Israel." But when John Paul II traveled there in 2000, he repeated the message of his visit to Rome's synagogue: "You are our elder brothers."

The pope's devotion to improving Jewish-Catholic relations was not limited to grand gestures. He had an eye for the finest details. For example, he suggested the term "Hebrew Scriptures" be substituted for "Old Testament," which implied something outmoded.

[...]

And this A.P. article ("Jerusalem hails pope's interfaith outreach") has responses from Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Jerusalem. And note also this Knight Ridder piece: "John Paul II lauded for efforts to mend Jewish-Catholic relations".

This Pope had a remarkable ecumenical spirit.