Europeans must seek reconciliation with the Jews for the "unspeakable suffering" inflicted on them, Pope John Paul II said Saturday as he set down a tough agenda for Europe.
"Don't forget the history of Europe is closely intertwined with the history of that people from which the Lord Jesus came," John Paul said. "The Jewish people have been inflicted with unspeakable suffering in Europe, and we can't affirm that all the roots of these injustices have been cut.""Reconciliation with the Jews is one of the fundamental duties of Christians in Europe," John Paul said in an address to Austrian officials and diplomats in the former Imperial Palace.
The pope also insisted sacrifices were required of Europeans to overcome injustices and economic disparity.
He noted the aspirations of the former communist countries in Europe as the 15-nation European Union considers taking them in. The pope insisted that Western Europe cannot remain an "island of Western well-being on the Continent."
"The richer countries, inevitably, will have to make concrete sacrifices" to overcome the "inhuman" economic differences, the pope said.
John Paul also said these countries should remain open to accepting immigrants from other countries.
Sitting among the dignitaries was former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who drew the ire of Jewish groups because of his alleged complicity in war crimes by the German army in World War II.
Waldheim denied the accusations but remains on the U.S. "watch list" of people barred entry to the United States, despite previously living there for years as an Austrian diplomat and then as secretary-general of the United Nations in New York.
Waldheim, invited to the ceremony as a former Austrian head of state, shook John Paul's hand and chatted briefly with him at Hofburg palace, the official seat of Austria's president.
The pope received Waldheim in the Vatican in 1987, and Waldheim welcomed the pope on his last trip to Austria in 1988, leading to protests by Jews.
John Paul, who was 19 years old when the Nazis occupied his native Poland, has spoken out often against anti-Semitism and the horrors of the Holocaust, when an estimated 6 million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis.
But Saturday was believed to be the first time he put the burden specifically on Europeans to make amends.
Later, the pope celebrated an open-air Mass at St. Poelten, 40 miles west of Vienna, where the local bishop has become the center of a storm that epitomizes the divisions rocking Austria's Roman Catholic church.
Many of the participants carried tiny flags in the Vatican's yellow and white colors expressing loyalty to the pope and conservative Bish-op Kurt Krenn.
Krenn has defended an Austrian cardinal forced out by the Vatican following accusations of pedophilia, saying the cardinal was innocent.