Costa Rica's Religious Thaw
After years of distant and sometimes bitter relations, Costa Rica's Catholic Church and small Jewish community have begun to take steps toward interfaith dialogue. Church leaders and Jewish community representatives met in December to discuss how to improve relations.

This came on the heels of November's commemorations for Nostra Aetate - the 1965 Vatican document that began to repair centuries of Church persecution of the Jews - in which the entire local church hierarchy visited the Orthodox Israeli-Zionist Center's synagogue, reportedly the first such visit in the country's history.

The renewal of contacts and the high-level visits, facilitated by the local Vatican and Israeli embassies, could end tensions that have lingered here even after Pope John Paul II's visit to Jerusalem in March 2000 broke many barriers to Jewish-Catholic ties.

One reason given for the interfaith tension is the church leadership's role in blocking the 1988 extradition to the Soviet Union of Ukrainian Bohdan Koziy, a Nazi collaborator. Other resentments and domestic politics also have taken their toll.

However, Archbishop Roman Arrieta, whose controversial actions included backing Ukrainian Church-in-exile claims that Koziy was the victim of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy, has died. So, too, has Koziy, who passed away in a public hospital as a free man.

The new archbishop, Hugo Barrantes, and the head of the powerful Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Francisco Ulloa, have softened the Church's stance on other religions, helping lead to the thaw.

"The visit to the synagogue created a peak in ties with the Jewish community," said Father Jafet Peitrequin, executive director of the Church's Episcopal Conference's Interfaith Dialogue Commission. "There was a moment when we did not know who" among those present "was Jewish and who was Christian."

Although the Catholic Church has lost ground in recent years to fundamentalist churches, 76 percent of Costa Rica's 4 million people identify as Catholic, and it is the country's official religion. An estimated 4,000 Jews live in Costa Rica, most in the capital, and the Israeli-Zionist Center claims over 2,500 of them as members.

Such a meeting once would have seemed impossible: The first attempt at interfaith interaction failed after the progressive order of nuns that could have facilitated it left the country.

Since then the center, the dominant shul in the country, has found itself facing competition from fledgling Chabad Lubavitch and reform centers, and the local church has moved to the social and political right, with Opus Dei gaining influence.

In a 2005 interview with JTA, Grand Rabbi Gershon Miletski said that while he had not met privately with Barrantes since he became archbishop two years ago, the two had tried to coordinate a meeting, albeit unsuccessfully. Center members said they hope the talks will lead to closer ties.

Center member Moises Fachler, who participated in the December meetings, hopes to be a founding member of a reborn interfaith board, and feels that now that the Church has taken the first step the center should respond. Still, he noted that Chabad and Reform members have shown the greatest enthusiasm for following up on the Church's visit.

Attorney Harold Wohlstein, who helped lead the center's legal efforts to get Koziy extradited, noted that Jewish and Catholic organizations maintained friendly and active ties despite cool relations between their spiritual leaderships.

"I wouldn't say relations were bad with the Church, I would say they were bad with Monsignor Arrieta," he said.

Not all of Costa Rica's Jews are ready to put aside past grudges. One Jewish speaker at the synagogue event reportedly railed against the Church, both in Costa Rica and internationally, for its past actions toward Judaism, though Peitrequin said that was an exception to the overall mood.

Jewish-Christian relations were not always poor in this country. Influential priest Benjamin Nunez cast a key vote in the United Nations allowing for the creation of the State of Israel, and in 1982 played a key role in making Costa Rica one of just two countries to place its embassy in Jerusalem, where a street is named for him. He remains a revered figure among Costa Rican Jews.