U.K. Shoah Initiative

LONDON — Britain will send students to visit Auschwitz and have them report on what they see. Two students from every high school and college will visit the death camp, then speak to their peers at special programs. The trips will be funded in part with $9.2 million from Britain’s Holocaust Educational Trust.

New Prayer Rapped

ROME — A coalition of Jewish groups expressed disappointment at the new text of the Catholic Church’s Prayer for the Jews. The prayer removes offensive language, including a reference to Jews’ “blindness” and a call that God “may lift the veil from their hearts,” but still prays for the salvation of the Jews through conversion to Christianity. Pope Benedict XVI on Feb. 5 unveiled the replacement for the Good Friday prayer in Latin, which is not used by most Catholics. “We had hoped that the prayer in the Latin rite would be the same as that of the universal Catholic liturgy in use since 1970,” said Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations. “This new version for the Latin rite appears to be a regression from the path advanced by the declaration of the Second Vatican Council… [which affirmed] the eternal validity of God’s divine Covenant with the Jewish People.”