Christians can be peacemakers in Middle East-rabbi

ROME (Reuters) - Christianity may be an agent for peace in the Middle East through its efforts to encourage dialogue with Jews and Muslims, a senior rabbi said on Wednesday during a Vatican summit.

At a two-week meeting to debate how to protect minority communities in the Middle East and promote harmony with other religions, Rabbi David Rosen said Christian initiatives were bringing communities together and helping to rebuild trust.

"I express the hope that Christianity can actually serve as an agent for peace in the Middle East and in the Holy Land," Rosen told reporters in Rome before addressing the synod of Catholic bishops on Wednesday.

"If this synod helps advance not only bilateral dialogue, but even trilateral relations, between Christians, Jews and Muslims, that could be a great source of blessing, both for the Middle East and universally," said Rosen, who is international director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

The synod has invited an Iranian cleric and a Lebanese Muslim to speak, although Rosen said he would not be meeting the Muslim leaders at the summit.

Opening the synod in the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Benedict called for peace, justice and harmony in the Middle Eastern birthplace of Christianity, saying that living in a dignified manner in one's own country was a fundamental human right.

Christians made up about 20 percent of the region's population a century ago and now account for about 5 percent.

Bishops from throughout the Middle East are attending the meeting for talks ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and strife in Iraq to radical Islamism, economic crisis and the divisions among the region's many Christian churches.

Rosen said the visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel in 2000, and the Vatican's efforts to reach out to Jews had helped to raise awareness of Christianity in Israel.

He added that if Christians wanted to further improve relations with Jews, they should also take Jewish concerns into account when choosing candidates for sainthood.

Pope Benedict's decision to move wartime pontiff Pius XII, accused by some of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, closer to sainthood has raised eyebrows in Jewish communities.

In the first address by a Jew to a Vatican synod in 2008, Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen recalled the controversy and said Pius XII should have done more to help Jews.

"It's not the business of the Jewish people to tell the Catholic Church who its saints are," Rosen said on Wednesday.

"However, if you, the Church, say as you do say that you want to live in a relationship of mutual respect with the Jewish people, then you should take our sensibilities into account."

(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)