PRESIDENTE DE ISRAEL VISITARÁ PAPA

@PESQUISE: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=130

RESUMO: pela primeira na história, o presidente de Israel visitará o Vaticano. Data prevista: 17.11.05. 

In a First, Israeli President to Visit Vatican

BY STACY MEICHTRY                                                                                                   © 2005 Religion News Service

resident Moshe Katsav of Israel is due to visit Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Nov. 17, marking the first official visit by an Israeli head of state to the seat of Roman Catholicism.

Benedict, who as a boy was briefly forced to enlist in the Hitler Youth movement, appears to have invited Katsav to underscore dialogue between Catholicism and Judaism on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, or "In Our Time." Produced during the Second Vatican Council, the document denounced the notion that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus Christ -- a belief that fueled centuries of conflict between the faiths.

"The visit is of great symbolic value," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

According to the Times of London, Oded Ben-Hur, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See, called the visit "history in the making."

The Vatican has not yet commented on the visit, which has not been officially announced.

Katsav, Israel's ceremonial president, will make the visit 12 years after Jerusalem and the Holy See established diplomatic relations. Relations took another step forward when John Paul II visited Israel in 2000 and placed a hand-written note at the Western Wall expressing remorse for Christian hostility toward Jews.

Tensions increased in August after Israeli officials accused Benedict of omitting their country from a list of terrorist targets that included Britain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. The rift appeared to heal, however, when Benedict visited a Jewish synagogue in Cologne during his first trip outside Italy.