Jews disappointed by changes to Vatican prayer

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Jewish leaders have reacted with disappointment to the Vatican's new version of a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews and said it could set back inter-religious relations by decades.

In changes to the contested Latin prayer announced on Tuesday, the Vatican removed a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleted a phrase that asked God to "remove the veil from their hearts".

But the new version of the prayer still says Jews should recognise Jesus Christ as the saviour of all men and still has an underlying call to conversion they wanted omitted.

"While we appreciate that some of the deprecatory language has been removed ... we are deeply troubled and disappointed that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord was kept intact," said Abraham Foxman, U.S. national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Foxman denounced the changes as "cosmetic revisions" while Rome's chief Rabbi Riccardo Segni called them "a serious step backwards".

Jewish groups complained last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing a wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal, or prayer book, that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.

Jewish groups had protested against the re-introduction of the old prayer for the Jews, which will be used only by a tiny minority of Catholics, and had asked the Pope to change it.

According to an unofficial translation, the new prayer says: