By JOSEPH KELLARD
The future Pope Benedict XVI invited Gary Krupp to meet him in Rome, but unbeknown to both men, the cardinal's secretary mixed up the scheduling.
Krupp recalled this story on Tuesday morning, two days before he was to reunite with the pope in Washington, D.C., the initial stop on the pontiff's first official visit to the United States.
“When I was in Jerusalem with my wife,” Krupp remembered, “I got an e-mail from his secretary saying, 'I think I made a terrible mistake - the cardinal was waiting for you today and you weren't here. As soon as I saw him next, I apologized for the confusion.'”
Krupp, whose rare spare time is spent at beach cabanas or dining at his favorite Italian restaurant, told the tale matter-of-factly, since he has met the last two popes several times.
Six years ago, Krupp, who is Jewish, established the Pave the Way Foundation, an interfaith activist group that aims to remove “non-theological obstacles” between religions. On Tuesday, Krupp was busy preparing for his trip to Washington, after the Vatican invited him to attend a gathering of heads of major faiths on Thursday. Pave the Way is the only nonsectarian organization invited to the meeting, and Krupp is the only lay member of the papal household.
A Rockville Centre resident before he moved to Long Beach in 2001, Krupp was knighted by Pope John Paul II into the order of St. Gregory the Great in 2000, making him a member of the House of the Holy See. He is one of only seven Jews ever to receive that papal honor, and Pope Benedict XVI raised Krupp's rank to commander with a silver star.
Krupp said that the Vatican requested that he wear his Papal Order uniform to Thursday's event, where he expects the pope to extend a conciliatory hand to the various religious leaders. “Because there's been some rough spots here and there with the different religions - with the Muslims and the Jews - and this will be a healing event,” said Krupp, who will stand alongside the pope when he delivers a Passover blessing.
The day before his flight to Washington, Krupp was doing the rounds with local media, from News 12 to CBS to the New York Post. “Normally we wouldn't be getting this much attention,” Krupp said of Pave the Way, “so it's very exciting. We're hoping for a very special time with the pope.”
Dave Hauser, a member of the foundation's board of directors, said that directing the organization has turned into a full-time job for Krupp. “Gary is very concerned about the future of humanity, and his whole life revolves around this organization, making trips every three weeks to a month, and he's gone for up to three weeks sometimes.”
Among Krupp's more memorable meetings with Benedict VXI was during a trip to Poland in 2006. He and fellow Pave the Way member Dr. Jerzy Kluger met the pontiff at the childhood home of Pope John Paul II in Wadowice, and at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“When he started blessing the shrine in Auschwitz,” Krupp recalled, “a rainbow came out. I took a picture of it, framed it and gave it to him. He was so excited to get that.”
One controversy that followed Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy was his experiences as a youth in Nazi Germany, which had the greatest potential to fracture Krupp's relationship with him. But Krupp said that just as Pope John Paul II witnessed Hitler's troops occupying Poland, his successor's connection to the Nazi regime gives him “a dimension of understanding.”
“He told everyone that he was drafted into Hitler Youth as a young boy, but upon discovering their motives, he resigned, and also that he was drafted into the army and escaped, as did his father,” Krupp said when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope in 2005, the first German leader of the Catholic Church since the 11th century. “He was hunted down because he would not fight.”
From 1990 to 2005, when Pope John Paul II died at age 84, Krupp and his wife, Meredith, met him four times. In January 2005, Krupp and local religious leaders met with John Paul II at the Vatican, the pope's last public audience before his death. The mostly New York-area delegation included the largest group of Jewish leaders - 130 - ever to visit the Vatican.
Krupp considered John Paul II a “very good friend,” one who changed the course of his life and prompted him to form the Pave the Way Foundation.
The organization sponsors gestures of good will among different religious groups - such as a meeting of high-level ministers regarding ongoing efforts to establish diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, held in Rome in 2005. Pave the Way works with all religious denominations in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
“The basic concept of the foundation is this,” said Hauser. “People are killing each other in the name of God, and that's not a happy thing. So Gary is meeting with these different religious leaders to get them to get the extremists to stop killing each other and us.”
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
