Pope Benedict XVI will visit a synagogue and meet with Jewish leaders during his first foreign trip as pope next week.
The Pontiff’s four-day tour of his native Germany will mark Catholic World Youth Day celebrations in the presence of up to 800,000 young people from across the globe.
The German pope, who grew up under the Nazi regime and even joined Adolf Hitler’s training programme for Nazi youths, will pay a solemn visit to the Cologne synagogue 60 years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps.
Building bridges
Benedict XVI will make only the second ever visit by a Roman Catholic leader to a Jewish place of worship when he will pray at Cologne’s synagogue and hold talks with Jewish leaders on Friday 19 August, the second day his German trip.
The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics will then hold an audience with Muslim leaders the following day, signifying his commitment to dialogue with other religions during a summer marked by an upsurge of Islamic terrorist violence.
He has already welcomed progress in Christian-Muslim dialogue and said he wanted to continue "building bridges of friendship" with other religions.
It was in condemning terrorism in the wake of the recent bombings in London and Egypt that the pope had his first diplomatic spat after Israel formally complained that he had omitted mention of a recent suicide bombing there.
The Vatican retorted by accusing the Israelis of twisting the pope’s words.
Vatican insiders are hoping that the focus of relations with Judaism swings back from the political to the religious with the synagogue visit.
Ideological breakthroughs
The new pope, praised by some Jewish scholars as providing the ideological framework for better Catholic-Jewish relations, seems ideally placed to build on a number of breakthroughs in relations with other religions accomplished during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.
In 1986, the late pope invited Muslims and followers of other faiths to Assisi, Italy, to pray together for world peace and also that year, became the first pope in history to visit a synagogue, in Rome.
In 2001, he became the first pontiff to make an official visit to a mosque, in the Syrian capital Damascus.
In one of his first public homilies, Benedict XVI said he intended to follow the example of the "missionary pope" John Paul II, and prayed for the strength "to preach the Gospel" throughout the world.
Improving relations
In June, the pope said he particularly wanted to pursue better relations with Jews, highlighting the importance of continuing to reflect on the Holocaust.
He told members of an international Jewish committee that "remembrance of the past remains for both communities a moral imperative."
"This imperative must include a continued reflection on the profound historical, moral and theological questions presented by the experience of the Shoah," he said, referring to the Holocaust during which six million Jews were exterminated in Nazi camps during the second world war.
The pope has several times referred to the role played by the 1965 "Nostra Aetate" document in which the Catholic Church formally renounced the "teaching of contempt" of Judaism and called for improved dialogue between the religions.