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Last update - 11:50 11/08/2007 Anti-Defamation League demands Pope denounce anti-Semitic Polish priest By Haaretz Service and Reuters The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday called on Pope Benedict XVI to publicly denounce the continued anti-Semitic statements made by controversial Polish priest and radio personality, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk. The organization petitioned the Pope following his private meeting with Rydzyk, founder and director of Radio Maryja whose broadcasts have been labeled anti-Semitic by various groups. In his letter to the pontiff, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman wrote that in meeting with Rydzyk and failing to raise the issue of anti-Semitism with him "you have unfortunately lent him the priceless credibility of your office and integrity in the eyes of the world." Advertisement "As the founder and director of Radio Maryja, Father Rydzyk is responsible for the anti-Semitic comments and concepts the station regularly broadcasts to millions of Polish Catholic faithful," wrote Foxman. "Father Rydzyk himself has on several occasions made anti-Semitic statements on the air. These are despicable ... [and] must be strongly and publicly condemned by all leaders and people of good will," he added. In Rydzyk's recent on-air discussion of a potential government compensation deal on confiscated property Rydzyk reportedly called Jews 'greedy', and Polish President Lech Kaczynski a "fraudster who is in the pockets of the Jewish lobby." "We respectfully request that you publicly condemn anti-Semitism that is being spouted by Father Rydzyk and other Catholic leaders in Poland," Foxman wrote to the Pope. By coincidence, the Pope's meeting with Rydzyk took place the same day that hundreds of gravestones were vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti in one of Poland?s largest Jewish cemeteries, Czestochowa. Jewish groups criticize Pope's meeting with radical priest Jewish groups criticized Pope Benedict on Wednesday for meeting with a radical Polish priest accused of making anti-Semitic statements. Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, whose media empire includes a Polish radio station scorned by Jewish rights groups, won face-time with the Pope at his summer residence on Sunday. The meeting followed the Pope's weekly Angelus prayer and came just days after Rydzyk issued a public apology for accusing a "Jewish lobby" of trying to extract millions from the Polish state. He had also called the Polish president a liar. Jewish rights groups said they were concerned the meeting gave added clout to Rydzyk and a radio station, Radio Maryja, that they have long accused of spouting anti-Semitic remarks. The European Jewish Congress (EJC) said it was "shocked" by the meeting. It said the German-born Pontiff had effectively given "his blessing (to) a man and an institution that have tarnished the image of the Polish church". Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Polish Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict visited the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz last year. He called himself "a son of Germany" and asked why God was silent when 1.5million victims died there. The Pope is set to visit a monument for Holocaust victims next month in Austria. Still, some Jewish leaders have expressed concern with the Vatican's handling of issues sensitive to the Jewish community. They sounded the alarm last month over the Pope's decree allowing wider use of the old Latin mass, worrying it could possibly revive use of a prayer calling for the conversion of the Jews. The meeting with Rydzyk is another example. "I think that there was greater sensitivity with the Pope from Poland on issues such as this," said Shimon Samuels, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center's European office in Paris. Samuels said he asked the Pontiff to condemn statements from Radio Maryja even before the meeting. "Nothing has come out," he said Bookmark to del.icio.us   Snoop Dogg in Israel American rapper Snoop Dogg slated to perform in Ramat Gan. 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