POPE TO MEET HIGH LEVEL JEWISH GROUP TOMORROW IN VATICAN

VATICAN CITY, JUN 8, 2005 (VIS) - Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI will receive in private audience a group of 25 distinguished Jews who represent the world's major Jewish organizations, according to a communique from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, within which is the Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with Jews.

  Commission president and secretary, respectively Cardinal Walter Kasper and Fr. Norbert Hofmann, will accompany the Jewish guests to the papal audience. The delegation will be led by Rabbi Israel Singer, president of the International Jewish Committee on Inter-religious Consultations (IJCIC) of New York.

  The communique states that "the IJCIC is an international organization comprised of all Jewish agencies in the world involved in inter-religious dialogue. The Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with Jews has been meeting for the past 35 years with the IJCIC which, as a partner in dialogue, has shown itself to be very useful in a not-always easy context. ... There have been 18 periodic meetings of the Catholic-Jewish International Liaison Committee. The last such meeting was in Buenos Aires, Argentina in July 2004."

  Next October 27, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of the Vatican Council II Declaration "Nostra Aetate,"  a high-level Jewish delegation will be present for this commemorative event.
CON-UC/JEWISH DELEGATION/KASPER            VIS 20050608 (220)