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Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni.
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ROME (EJP)---Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni said that many people and himself think that Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen “should have consulted with the local community to understand the complex relations with the Church before agreeing to take part in the synod."
Cohen became Monday the first Jew to address a synod of Catholic bishops, the supreme representative body of the Catholic Church,
Di Segni said that in interviews with the local Italian press, Cohen had labeled as "extremists" individuals in the Italian Jewish community who opposed his addressing the synod.
"These people are not extremists by any means. They are simply people who are aware of the delicate relationship between the Church and the Jews," he told The Jerusalem Post.
Last week, Rabbi Di Segni pulled out of a planned marathon reading of the entire Bible on Italian RAI television with Pope Benedict XVI on the grounds that the event is "too Catholic".
Di Segni said, "The Bible is not the same thing for Jews and for Christians. For us, it is the Old Testament, but not the New Testament".
In his address to the synod of bishops, Shear-Yashuv Cohen said: "There is a long, hard and painful history of the relationship between our people, our faith and the Catholic Church leadership and followers, a history of blood and tears."
The history of Christian persecution of Jews, including genocide, exile, pogroms, crusades and discrimination, goes back 2,000 years.
The Catholic Church laid the foundation for reconciliation between the two faiths during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s which proclaimed the common "spiritual heritage" of Jews and Christians.
The rapprochement accelerated under Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, the first pope to pay an official visit to a synagogue, formally recognise Israel and make an official trip to the Jewish state.
John Paul also was the first to pray at the Auschwitz death camp in his native Poland and to formally repent for the Catholic Church's failure to adequately recognise and react to the Holocaust.
Benedict has continued the conciliatory steps taken by John Paul II to improve inter-faith relations, but has sometimes stumbled.
