Jewish Leaders Hail Work on Scriptures

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 18— A book by the Pontifical Biblical Commission which says that the Jews are not waiting in vain for the Messiah has won praise among Jewish scholars. “The Jewish People and Their Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible” says that Jews and Christians share the wait for a Messiah, although Jews are waiting for the first coming, while Christians await the second.

“The difference consists in the fact that for us, He who will come will have the same traits of that Jesus who has already come,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in an introduction.

Jesuit Father Albert Vanhoye, a member of the commission, said the project sees Scripture as a link between Christians and Jews and the New Testament as a continuation of the Old, though also divergent.

Rabbi Alberto Piattelli, a professor in Rome, commented that the work recognizes the value of the Jewish position regarding the wait for the Messiah.

Though released in November, the book received widespread attention only recently, after an Italian news agency published a small report on it, the New York daily said. Some Jewish leaders felt that the work had been deliberately kept low key, but Vatican officials said publication was not announced because the study is intended for theologians.

Theologian Says Pius XII Tried to Exorcise Hitler

DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, Jan. 23— Pope Pius XII believed Adolf Hitler was possessed by the devil, and he tried several times to perform an exorcism on the Nazi leader in absentia. Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel, postulator of the cause of canonization of Pius XII, spoke to the German news agency in response to accusations that the wartime Pope failed to speak out against the Nazi Holocaust.

During the exorcisms, Pope Pius tried to “invoke God, so that he may liberate that person from the diabolical influences that he experienced and which formed the basis of his actions,” said Father Gumpel. He added that the Pope had publicly denounced Nazi Germany's plan for a “New Order” during a 1942 Christmas radio message.

Roman Exorcist Complains About New Rites

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 1— The Church's best-known exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth of Rome, said he has refused to use the new exorcism rite because it is more restrictive. “We can't touch curses, we can't talk to the devil, and we can do an exorcism only when it's a sure possession, which, since the exorcism itself is diagnostic, can't possibly work,” the author of An Exorcist Tells His Story told the newspaper. “An unnecessary exorcism never hurt anybody.”

Father Amorth, 75, also said, “It's not all that bad” if children see “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone” with their parents. He had earlier told an Italian news agency that the devil was behind the Harry Potter books.