Jesuits and Jews honor pontiff through exhibit

A collection of pictures, artifacts and videos begins its display in Ohio.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Jewish leaders who praised the way Pope John Paul II reached out to them have joined with a Jesuit university for a historical tribute to the late pontiff.
"A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II & amp; the Jewish People" includes hundreds of photos, murals, videos and artifacts starting with the childhood in Poland of Karol Wojtyla, who as pope extended papal recognition to Israel and prayed for reconciliation at the Wailing Wall.
The interactive exhibit was scheduled to open Thursday at Xavier University and will stay until July 15, then move to the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., for a mid-September opening.
Sponsors hope it will tour Roman Catholic and Jewish universities and other venues in the United States before traveling to Europe and becoming a permanent display in Israel.
The kickoff Wednesday had been planned as a celebration of John Paul's 85th birthday. The pontiff died April 2.
Ecumenical embrace
"In some sense, you have a feeling that his spirit pervades this whole thing," said Rabbi Jack Bemporad, of Secaucus, N.J., director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding.
"It's almost better than an audience with him," said Bemporad, who met with John Paul numerous times. "It's almost like you get into his soul."
He last saw John Paul in January, when he introduced the pontiff to a group of rabbis and cantors.
"They were blown away," Bemporad said. "He was so loving and so caring ... he opened his arms to embrace everyone there. He really pulled himself together to be able to speak and to say how important this group of rabbis and cantors and Jewish leaders were to him."
The hundreds of photos and murals, some on panels 8 feet tall, trace the late pope's life from his boyhood in Wadowice, Poland, through World War II, his ascent through the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and his historic outreach to Jews.
Many of his personal effects, including the walking cane and monogrammed skull cap used on his visit to Israel in 2000, are on loan from museums and private collections.
The title of the exhibit comes from a speech John Paul made in April 1993 on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in which he called reconciliation "the common task awaiting us."
"It is therefore necessary for us, Christians and Jews, to be first a blessing to one another," he said.
Birthday planning
Officials at Xavier, the Hillel Jewish Student Center of Cincinnati and Holocaust survivor Yaffa Eliach, a former visiting professor at Xavier who later founded the Shtetl Foundation in New York, originated the concept for the exhibit.
They met with the pope in Rome last October to outline the proposal and receive his support. By then, the pope was in ill health but lit up when he was shown a picture of his mother, who died when he was 9.
"That was one of the few times when it was a good thing to tell the recipient what we were going to give him for his birthday," said Rabbi Abie Ingber, co-executive director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center.
Retired Cardinal Edward Cassidy, who was president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, came from Australia for the Wednesday night preview.
"It's a wonderful tribute for the tremendous work he did," Cassidy said, and is more poignant because of John Paul's death.
"It has a new significance and certainly is much more moving to me and, I'm sure, to many others," Cassidy said. "As I went through, it was hard to keep the tears from flowing."