Catholic-Jewish reconciliation

Pope Benedict visited the Cologne synagogue in Germany yesterday, making him only the second Pope known to visit a Jewish place of worship since the early history of the Roman Catholic Church 2,000 years ago.

Following is a factbox on some highlights in the improvement in Catholic-Jewish relations over the past four decades:

¤ 1964: Pope Paul VI becomes the first Pope to visit the Holy Land but this does little to improve relations and he never utters the word Israel during his 12-hour visit to the Jewish state, which the Vatican did not recognise at the time.

¤ 1965: The Second Vatican Council issues the document Nostra Aetate ("In Our Times") repudiating the notion of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ's death for the first time.

¤ 1986: Pope John Paul II becomes the first Pope since the days of the early Church to visit a Jewish place of worship when he enters Rome's synagogue in 1986.

¤ 1994: The Vatican formally establishes diplomatic relations with Israel.

¤ 1998: The Vatican apologises in the document "We Remember, a reflection on the Shoah" for Catholics who failed to do enough to help Jews against Nazi persecution. However, it also defends wartime Pope Pius XII from accusations that he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. While Jews welcome the document's strong condemnation of anti-Semitism, they say it fails to account adequately for the role of Catholic teachings in spawning it and criticise its defence of Pius XII.

¤ 2000: Pope John Paul visits Israel and its Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, crowning two decades of effort to reconcile Catholics and Jews and sweep away centuries of suspicion.

¤ 2005: Pope Benedict visits the Cologne synagogue. The appeal by the head of the Jewish community there to open all Vatican archives concerning the Second World War shows that Pius XII remains a major stumbling block on the road to reconciliation. Pope John Paul put Pius on the road to sainthood and this process, much criticised by Jewish leaders, has not been slowed.