ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Here's some disturbing, outrageous and completely unexpected news!



Israel seizes Church funds
pre-empting ongoing fiscal negotiations
in the bilateral commission
by Arieh Cohen




TEL AVIV, June 8 (AsiaNews) - Only weeks after Benedict XVI’s visit to Israel, Tax Chief Yehezkel Abrahamoff, has seized Church funds in Israel to force ecclesial institutions to pay tax, instead of waiting for the outcome of negotiations on the fiscal status of the Church in Israel.

A personal initiative or a change in the policy of the Netanyahu government?

The Chief Tax Collector at Israel's Finance Ministry, Yehezkel Abrahamoff, notified institutions of the Catholic Church in Israel that he has seized their funds, in order to force them to submit at once to all of the fiscal demands that he considers applicable to them, ahead of the Agreement on the fiscal status of the Church, which is being negotiated, among other things, between the Holy See and the State of Israel.

In the last few hours, AsiaNews has received both documentation and testimony to this effect. The institutions concerned have, however, insisted on not being named, for fear of reprisals on the part of the Tax Authority.

The radical initiative of Mr. Abrahamoff comes only a few weeks after the departure from Israel of Pope Benedict XVI, whose visit was thought to favour precisely progress towards the much awaited Agreement between the Holy See and the Jewish State.

At this time it is not yet possible to know whether it is a matter of the personal decision of a single functionary, albeit a particularly powerful one, or whether it reflects a radical change of direction by the Netanyahu Government.

An expert on Church-State relations in Israel, reached by AsiaNews, says he is confident that the Government knows nothing of what he says must be the idea of a single individual. The expert foresees that when the Head of the Government is informed of the matter, the functionary will be reprimanded and the attachment orders annulled, with apologies.

The negotiators for the Holy See and the State of Israel, the expert recalls, issued their most recent Joint Communiqué on 30 April, when they spoke of the talks as being conducted "in friendship", and re-committed the Parties to working out bilaterally an agreed fiscal regime for the Church in Israel.

But the Government, he adds, will have to intervene quickly to avoid the serious damage that the "excesses" of a single functionary could cause to the good relations with the Church.

In any case, he observes, the Government's intervention to quash the orders will have to be very quick, since otherwise the institutions of the Church, especially schools and hospitals may soon find it difficult to cover essential expenses for the purchase of goods and services.



Church funds seized in the Holy Land:
Fr. Jaeger speaks out for the Custody



Rome, June 8 (AsiaNews) – “An extraordinary step” which hopefully “will be disowned” by the Israeli government, in the framework of ongoing negotiations on the Fundamental Agreement between Israel and the Holy See: this is how the delegate of the Custody of the Holy Land, Fr. David Jaeger comments to AsiaNews on the news that the Israeli Ministry for Finance has seized the funds of some ecclesiastical institutions.

The move came only a few days after Benedict XVI’s visit to Israel, and was carried out by Yehezkel Abrahamoff, Tax Chief at the Israeli Ministry for Finance.

It appears that the seizure of funds is aimed at forcing the Church to pay taxes, without waiting the outcome of ongoing negotiations between the Holy See and Israel, which also deal with the fiscal status of the Church in Israel.

So far there has been no statement from the Israeli Embassy to the Holy See. An embassy official told AsiaNews that ambassador Mordechay Lewy is not in the office today.

In a statement to AsiaNews Fr. David Jaeger, the delegate of the Custody of the Holy Land, said: "Not having received any instructions as to this - and given the extreme delicacy of the subject matter - I am at this time unable to reply to reporters' questions as to whether the Custody of the Holy Land has been targeted by the attachment of Church funds reportedly decreed by an official of the Finance Ministry, a Mr. Yehezkel Abrahamoff”.

“In a personal capacity, I can express only the hope that this extraordinary initiative, if confirmed, be found to be that of an uninformed individual functionary, and that in the next few hours it will disowned and overturned by his Superiors, in keeping with the well-known treaty obligation of the State (in the framework of its Fundamental Agreement with the Holy See) to abstain rigorously from any such unilateral moves while negotiations are pending on the plane of public international law."




P.S.
GOOD NEWS, AFTER ALL -
FR. JAEGER WAS RIGHT:
ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY
REVOKES ORDER AND CLAIMS
'IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING'



JERUSALEM, June 8 (Translated from ANSA) - There will be no diplomatic 'incident', sources at the Israeli foreign ministry assured ANSA, who said that the reported freezing of funds belonging to a Catholic institution in Israel [the Custody of the Holy Land] was the 'result of a technical error' and 'a misunderstanding', and that the order has been revoked.

The freeze, said the high-level representative, was taken 'at the level of a functionary' without a directive from the government.

"It was a misunderstanding due to the lack of awareness about the Catholic institutions whose fiscal status have been under negotiation between Israel and the Holy See," he said.

The Israeli finance ministry, whose chief tax collector gave the freeze order, avoided comment.