Pope Receives Menorah From American Jews

JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY, April 14—A four-foot tall, six-branched menorah designed to commemorate the 6 million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust has been permanently erected in the gardens of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, according to the JTA.

Ruth E. Gruber reported that a 12-inch miniature of the menorah, designed by Israeli sculptor Aaron Bezalel, was presented to Pope John Paul II at his general audience the following day.

The dedication ceremony came on the Jewish feast of Yom Hashoah and was attended by senior Catholic officials and Jewish leaders from the United States, who called the permanent placement of the menorah a further step in continuing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, according to Gruber.

Canonizations May Aid Evangelization

ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 15—A story on the canonization cause of Blessed Katharine Drexel included an interesting and understandalbe theory for why Pope John II has canonized more people than all his predecessors in the 19th and 20th centuries combined, according to the AP. The Pope “sees the canonization of saints as an instrument of evangelization,” Lawrence Cunningham, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame told the wire service's Joann Loviglio.

The story also indirectly raised the possibility that Blessed Katharine may one day serve as a patron saint of the deaf. In 1988, after the Vatican confirmed that Robert Gutherman was cured of deafness in one ear after praying for the intercession of Mother Drexel, she was declared blessed. The church is now investigating the case of an unidentified 6-year-old from the Philadelphia area whose hearing is also said to have been similarly restored as part of the canonization process.