Catholic World News News Feature

Israel-Vatican talks: points of contention September 17, 2004

After meetings with Vatican officials, a key Israeli government leader has said that diplomatic problems between the Holy See and Israel will soon be resolved. But an Israeli Catholic priest who has been involved in negotiations has told the AsiaNews service that some serious obstacles remain.

Israeli interior minister Avraham Poraz met on September 15 with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo. Their talks involved some of the key issues that have stalled a full diplomatic accord between Israel and the Holy See, even 10 years after the signing of the "fundamental agreement" that opened diplomatic relations between the two. Afterward his talks at the Vatican, the Israeli cabinet minister met with Pope John Paul II at his summer residence in Castel Gandalfo.

In an interview with AsiaNews, Poraz said that his government was near an agreement with Church officials on three crucial issues: visas for Catholic missionaries, tax-exempt status for Church property, and access to the Christian shrines of the Holy Land. The visa problems in particular, he said, are "all but resolved."

But Father David Jaeger, a spokesman for the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, told AsiaNews that the visa problems remain unsettled, noting that Israel has failed to provide a public explanation for the government's failure to renew visas for missionaries. Father Jaeger also told AsiaNews, in a detailed interview, that regarding tax exemptions, "the Church has never demanded anything other than the recognition of vested rights; in other words, that its legal and tax conditions not worsen with respect to those under previous regimes." Finally, the Franciscan priest rejected the argument, put forward by Poraz, that a dispute over control of the Cenacle, a revered Christian shrine, is "a disagreement between churches." He responded that "there there has never been a controversy between Christian churches, and there must never be one, unless someone provokes one in order to 'divide and rule,' as they used to say in the ancient Roman Empire."