Israel’s relations with the Vatican have been more fraught than with any other state beyond the Muslim world. Suspicions on both sides run deep. For decades Israel saw Roman Catholicism as institutionally hostile — unwilling to set aside historic blame on Judaism for the Crucifixion, committed to continued proselytising and unrepentant over the Church’s wartime silence on the Holocaust. The Vatican, fearful of a backlash by the small number of Arab Christians, refused for years to recognise the state of Israel, was openly critical of Israeli actions in the occupied territories and was often in dispute over church property in the Holy Land. It was not until 1965 that centuries of hostility were ended with the Second Vatican Council’s declaration that Jews were not to blame for Christ’s death; and it was not 1993 that formal diplomatic relations were established.

The proposed state visit next month to the Vatican by the President of Israel is therefore of momentous symbolic importance. It will be the first such encounter since the founding of the state of Israel. It will reaffirm the Vatican’s vigorous condemnation of anti-Semitism and underline the Catholic view today of the Jews as “most dear to God”. And it will reinforce the message of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to a synagogue in Cologne this summer that he intends to make the consolidation of Christian-Jewish relations a central feature of his papacy.

His commitment to this priority has not always been so clear. Jews were as dismayed as other faiths and Christian denominations by his declaration four years ago, when as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he was responsible for enforcing Catholic doctrine, that faiths other than Catholicism were “deficient”. There was also anger in Israel more recently when as Pope he refused to condemn publicly a suicide bombing in Netanya. This spilt over into a public spat with the Vatican over terrorism and Israeli retaliation. But wiser heads in Israel understood the importance of a fresh start with the new Pope, and within weeks officials were describing him as a “true friend of Israel” — helped by Rome’s decision to put on ice moves under the last pontiff to canonise the controversial wartime Pope Pius XII.

Beyond the spiritual significance of the coming visit lie important mundane interests. The Catholic Church has extensive property in Israel and the occupied territories. It has occasionally been caught in the crossfire of disputes between Israel and the region’s Arab population — notably in the perennial disputes at the Holy Sepulchre and the recent row over plans to build a mosque in Nazareth. Israel, in wanting better relations, would like to enlist the Church’s huge moral authority in common resistance to terrorism and Islamic radicalism.

For both, however, what is more important is the recognition that the Catholic Church and Jews have been enemies for almost two millennia. Their lasting reconciliation would not only show that intractable problems are amenable to goodwill, but gives hope to all faiths that the worst of enemies can become the best of friends.