SIX SCHOLARS TO STUDY VATICAN ARCHIVES, WORLD WAR II

VATICAN CITY, NOV 23, 1999 (VIS) - Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and Seymour D. Reich, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations (IJCIC), today announced the names of six scholars - three Catholic and three Jewish - who will comprise a joint team to review published Vatican archival material relating to World War II.

The bilateral decision to form such a study team was announced at the Vatican on October 19.

The three Catholic scholars are Dr. Eva Fleischner, professor emerita of Montclair State University in New Jersey; Rev. Gerald P. Fogarty, professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and Rev. F. John Morley, a professor and Holocaust scholar at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

The Jewish scholars are Dr. Michael R. Marrus, professor of history and dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto; Dr. Bernard Suchecky, research director at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and Robert S. Wistrich, professor of history and holder of the Neuenberger Chair in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Today's communique announcing the composition of the team states that it will study the 11 volumes of Vatican archival material, published between 1965 and 1981, that relate to the Church's role during World War II. It adds that "the team is expected to raise relevant issues that its members feel have not been satisfactorily resolved by the documentation already available." Other specialists might be called in to assist.

If questions still remain, according to Cardinal Cassidy and Mr. Reich, "further clarification will be sought." Both acknowledged that the arrangement is unusual, if not unprecedented."

CON-UC;SCHOLARS; ARCHIVES; WAR;...;CASSIDY;VIS;19991123;Word: 300;