U.S. bishop says Jews have no `exclusive right' to Israel

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A special Vatican meeting on the Middle East
ended Saturday (Oct. 23) with a flare-up in Catholic-Jewish tensions,
after an American bishop declared the Bible does not give Jews
privileged rights to the land of Israel.

"We Christians cannot speak of the `promised land' as an exclusive
right for a privileged Jewish people," said Archbishop Cyril Bustros, a
native of Lebanon who is currently a Melkite Greek Catholic bishop in
Newton, Mass.

"This promise was nullified by Christ," Bustros said at a Vatican
press conference marking the end of a two-week session of the Synod of
Bishops. "There is no longer a chosen people -- all men and women of all
countries have become the chosen people."

Bustros' remark drew swift and strong rebukes from Israeli
spokesmen.

"The comments of Archbishop Bustros reflect either shocking
ignorance or insubordination in relation to the Catholic Church's
teaching on Jews and Judaism," said Rabbi David Rosen, director of
interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee and an adviser
to Israel's Chief Rabbinate.

Rosen, who addressed the synod in its first week, said the Second
Vatican Council of the 1960s affirmed "the eternal covenant between God
and the Jewish People, which is inextricably bound up with the land of
Israel."

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon called Bustros'
statement "a libel against the Jewish people and the State of Israel,"
and expressed "our disappointment that this important synod has become a
forum for political attacks on Israel in the best history of Arab
propaganda."

"The synod was hijacked by an anti-Israel majority," Ayalon said.

The two-week meeting, which was attended by 185 bishops, most of
them from the 22 "Eastern Catholic" Churches loyal to Rome, focused on
the precarious plight of 5.7 million Catholics in 16 Middle Eastern
countries.

The synod's closing document deplored both Palestinian suffering as
a consequence of the "Israeli occupation," and the "suffering and
insecurity in which Israelis live." It also reiterated a frequent theme
of synod participants by calling for "religious freedom and freedom of
conscience" in Muslim lands.