Vatican envoy meets with Boston Jews

BRAINTREE, Mass., March 27 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI's leading adviser on the Catholic Church's relations with Jews visited the Boston area this week to try to heal recent rifts.

Cardinal Walter Kasper was invited by the archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the Boston Globe reported. Kasper had lunch Wednesday with 50 Jewish leaders at the new diocesan headquarters in Braintree, Mass.

Benedict recently lifted the excommunication on a traditionalist bishop, Richard Williamson, who then proved to have made statements denying the Holocaust. Jewish leaders have also criticized the likely canonization of Pope Pius XII, who lead the church during World War II.

Kasper, a German, rededicated a Holocaust memorial that has been moved from the previous diocesan headquarters.

"The memory of what happened, now 65 years ago, cannot be forgotten," he said during the ceremony. "No Holocaust denial, which is a new injustice to the victims, can be allowed or permitted."