NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      JERUSALEM (CWNews.com) - Poland's president assured Jewish groups in a letter made public on Monday that the controversy over crosses recently planted near the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz would be soon resolved.

      President Aleksander Kwasniewski said in the letter to Avner Shalev, director of the Yad Veshem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, that the area where more than 150 crosses had been planted by grassroots Catholic groups would be returned to its original condition. Shalev said he understood this to mean that the 26-foot cross originally planted on the site in 1988 to memorialize a visit by Pope John Paul II in 1979 would remain.

      Jewish groups protested the cross planting, saying their presence was an offense to the memory of more than 1 million Jews killed at the camp. But Catholics said they also had the right to honor the Catholic Poles also killed at the site. Poland's bishop had already entered the debate by calling for the removal of all the crosses, except for the original 26-foot cross.