JERUSALEM - A top Israeli delegation will attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II, known here as the "pope of the Jews" for his efforts to reconcile the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism, officials said Tuesday.
The group will be led by President Moshe Katsav, representing the Jewish state and its people, the president's office said, while Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom will represent the government.
Also attending will be the chief rabbi of Haifa, Shaar Ychouv Hacohen, Supreme Court judge Salim Jubran, himself an Arab Israeli Catholic, and the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben Hur, officials said.
Shalom has called John Paul II "a great champion of reconciliation and brotherhood between the faiths" who strived for closer relations with Israel and the Jewish people.
Although a sometimes outspoken critic of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, John Paul II was held in high esteem by many Israelis, who recall his visit to the Holy Land in 2000, when he had asked the Jewish people for forgiveness for crimes perpetrated against them in the name of the Church.
On his visit, he also visited Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where he deplored the Nazi extermination of six million Jews.
A statement from Yad Vashem said John Paul II had "made great efforts to come to terms with the role of the Catholic church in the period of the Holocaust".
"Pope John Paul II leaves a legacy of deep commitment to the memory of the Holocaust and its continued relevance, which has left an indelible mark on Christianity," it added.
A former Israeli ambassador to the late pontiff's homeland of Poland, told AFP "John Paul was by any measure the greatest pope in many centuries and undeniably a friend of the Jews.
Professor Shewach Weiss, himself a Holocaust survivor, said Pope John XXIII "initiated the reconciliation of the Catholic Church with the Jews by calling into question the millennium-old doctrine of the God-killing Jewish people, but it is John Paul II who brought about the rapprochement."
For his part, former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Meir Lau praised John Paul for "unequivocally condemning Christian proselytism of Jews and the idea that the Church replaced the Jewish people in the covenant with God."
The current Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar noted after the pontiff's death Saturday that "he was the first pope to establish diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel and the first pope to visit a synagogue.
"I hope that his successors will continue on the path of reconciliation towards the Jewish people that he has led."
04/05/2005 14:11 GMT