Jan. 14, 2005 Jewish leaders set off on touchy visit to pope By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK A delegation of some 160 Jewish religious figures are going to Rome next week to meet with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican at a time of potential strains in the Vatican-Jewish relationship. The trip was scheduled before the recent discovery of a Vatican memo from 1946 indicating that Pope Pius XII instructed Catholic Church officials not to return some Jewish children to their families after the Holocaust. The meeting, slated for Tuesday, was planned as an occasion for the Jews to thank the current pope for his actions toward the Jewish people. "We're coming strictly to say 'thank you' for everything he's done during his pontificate for the Jewish people," said Garry Krupp, a Jewish member of the Papal Household who organized the trip under the auspices of his Pave the Way Foundation, a group focused on interreligious cooperation. But the recent discovery about Pius XII could rekindle the long- standing conflict between Jewish officials and the Vatican over the beatification of the pope. His wartime behavior has been decried by many Jews as anti-Semitic and deadly for the Jewish people - and make Tuesday's scheduled meeting with the pope potentially awkward. Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a participating rabbi from New York, said the trip likely would come to an abrupt end if the Jews brought up sensitive topics. When he visited the Vatican two years ago, Blech said, he got a glimpse of some of the rare Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican archive, including some of Maimonides' writings. After two years of lobbying, he said, the Vatican agreed to loan some of the rare manuscripts to the Jews, including parts of Maimonides' Mishna Torah. They will be given to the rabbis on this trip, and then will be exhibited at the Israel Museum this spring, he said. "This process has taken about two years," Blech said. "Now, 160 rabbis and cantors will be at the Vatican, meeting with the pope and expressing our thanks to him. We hopefully will be addressing certain other issues as well." Asked if the religious leaders would discuss with Vatican officials other rare Jewish artifacts rumored to be in the Vatican's possession, including some dating back to the Second Temple period, Blech said, "We were not permitted to bring up that issue. We were cautioned that if we were to do so our entire mission would be at an end." The trip will include visits to the Vatican Museums, Rome's Jewish community, a meeting with the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See and the meeting with the pope. "This pope has not only reached out to the Jewish people," Krupp said, "he's made major changes" to improve Jewish-Catholic ties. Trip participants cited the Vatican's diplomatic recognition of Israel, the pope's pronouncement that anti- Semitism is a sin, the pope's request that the Jews forgive Catholic actions against them and his visit to Israel in 2000 as some of John Paul II's positive accomplishments vis--vis the Jews. "This is long overdue," Krupp said.