New York, NY, July 19, 2007 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed the comments of a senior Vatican official that the Good Friday Latin prayer to convert Jews could be removed from the re-introduced Latin liturgy.  Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who ranks second to Pope Benedict XVI, told reporters that the Vatican could study the possibility of substituting the prayer.  "This could be decided and this would resolve all the problems," he said.

"We are pleased that the Vatican is listening to our concerns," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  "We hope that Cardinal Bertone's public conjectures will shortly result in putting Catholic-Jewish relations back to the positive mode we were in before all this."

Mr. Foxman added that, "ADL has no position on the Latin Mass itself.  Our concern is focused on the Good Friday Latin prayer to convert Jews, which contradicts 40 years of evolving Catholic teachings about the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, and the end of efforts to baptize Jews."

ADL has called on the Holy See to re-examine its decision to sanction the anti-Jewish Good Friday prayer, which is included in a new papal decree that grants wider usage of the Latin Mass, a worship service that has been restricted since the progressive reforms of the Second Vatican Council and the landmark Nostra Aetate document in the 1960s.  Because of the offensive language, Pope Paul VI in 1970 replaced the 1962 Latin prayer with a much more positive prayer for Jews.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.