Vatican City - Top officials from the World Jewish Congress met Monday with Pope Benedict XVI to voice concern about Iran but also to encourage pursuing a dialogue with moderate Muslims, participants said.
WJC President Ronald Lauder and the group's new secretary general, Michael Schneider, met with Benedict in a private audience at the Vatican.
Schneider said the delegation thanked the pope for his work supporting interfaith relations and invited him to meet with senior Jewish leaders during his planned trip to New York next year.
"We mentioned our extreme anxiety over the Iran situation, not just because of the Jewish angle but because it was a threat to world stability," Schneider said by telephone. "We were extremely anxious to find some way to be helpful in pushing the Iranians to some kind of sensibility."
Schneider said the delegation also repeated the WJC's proposal to reach out to the moderate Muslim world "to establish a dialogue among moderates, and to try to reach some common ground." He said Benedict was in favor of such a move, and voiced "frustration" with the situation over Iran.
Tehran's hard-line leadership increasingly has drawn international criticism over its nuclear program and comments about Israel and the Holocaust.
Schneider said the delegation also addressed the rise in neo-Nazi groups and anti-Semitic sentiments, particularly in Europe.
The group also underlined its commitment to maintaining its "long relationship between us and the Roman Catholic Church" in the wake of a management shake up at the Jewish organization.
The congress, one of the most prominent Jewish organizations, had been beset by a series of problems that culminated in May with the unexpected resignation of then-President Edgar M. Bronfman Sr.
Bronfman fired his longtime deputy, Rabbi Israel Singer, after a 2006 report by the New York attorney general concluded that Singer improperly used WJC funds for personal use. No criminal charges were filed.
Lauder, the son of cosmetics magnate Estee Lauder and a former U.S. ambassador to Austria, was named president in June. Schneider was appointed to his post two weeks ago.
Founded in 1936, the World Jewish Congress is known for its campaign to win restitution from Swiss banks holding the assets of Holocaust victims, fighting anti-Semitism and lobbying to allow the Jews of the Soviet Union to emigrate.