Pope praised for confronting anti-Semitism and terrorism head-on

POPE Benedict XVI won praise from Jews and respect from Muslims for his blunt warnings about the rise of anti-Semitism and terrorism in the world - issues that are likely to define his papacy and ones which he confronted head-on during his first foreign trip as pope.

Commentators also applauded Benedict for not hedging his words during his four-day visit to Cologne, Germany for World Youth Day.

The German-born Benedict became the second pontiff in history to enter a Jewish house of worship when he told Jewish leaders at a synagogue in Cologne on Friday that he would continue the ground-breaking path of improving Catholic-Jewish relations set out by Pope John Paul II.

Benedict, who served in the Hitler Youth, also condemned the “insane racist ideology, born of neo-paganism” that inspired the Holocaust and warned about the new rise of anti-Semitism - comments that drew praise from Jewish leaders around the world.

“The very symbol of your presence on the pulpit of Northern Europe’s oldest synagogue demonstrates to the world that we can look to the future without erasing the past,” the head of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, wrote in a letter to the Pope.

Benedict didn’t break any new ground with his synagogue comments, repeating previous church positions on the shared spiritual heritage of Christians and Jews.

He did, however, seem to harden his stance on terrorism when he spoke to representatives of Germany’s Muslim community a day later. He warned that terrorism risked exposing the world “to the darkness of a new barbarism” and urged them to join Christians in fighting terrorism.

“Finally a pope who, before a Muslim delegation, condemns Islamic-rooted terrorism without exception,” Italy’s leading Islamic commentator, Magdi Allam, wrote in the Corriere della Sera daily, saying the Pope’s speech amounted to a “new season” in Christian-Muslim relations.