'Blindness' reference cut, call to conversion stays - Pope Benedict has changed a recently reintroduced Catholic prayer that has offended Jewish groups by referring to their ''blindness'' and the ''veil'' in their hearts.
The prayer, a call for the conversion of Jews, appears in the traditional Latin Mass which fell into disuse after the Second Vatican Council but which Benedict said last summer could be used again.
The prayer is for use on Good Friday, the day just before Easter when Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In the new version of the prayer, which can be used for the first time on Good Friday this year, there is no longer any mention of ''blindness'' or a ''veil''. The reference to the ''darkness'' surrounding Jews has also gone.
But it is still a call for the conversion of Jews.
A note released by the office of the Vatican Secretary of State, published on Tuesday in the Vatican daily, gave the revised Latin text.
The following is an unofficial translation: ''Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may illuminate their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ. Almighty and everlasting God, you who wish that all men be saved and achieve knowledge of the truth, help all Israel to be saved along with the (other) peoples entering your Church''.
There were no immediate reactions from Jewish organisations to the new text.
Last July, amid the protests from the Jewish world, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, indicated a willingness to change the prayer, suggesting that a later version - written by Paul VI - be used instead.
Instead, it appears that Pope Benedict decided to rewrite the prayer again.
Catholic observers noted that the revised prayer will only be used in the very few Catholic parishes where worshippers have asked specifically to have Easter services in Latin.
The prayer in question has already been written several times. The original version, which some feared had been restored by the pope last year, referred to ''perfidious Jews''.
Relations between Jews and Catholics took major steps forward under Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, who made a historic visit to Rome's synagogue.
Benedict has promised to continue the same policy of dialogue and visited a synagogue himself when he was in Germany for World Youth Day in 2005.
However friction still surfaces at intervals, in connection with issues such as the beatification of Pius XII, who is accused by some Jews of not denouncing the Holocaust, and the apparent stalemate in diplomatic negotiations on the status of Church property in Israel.
