Pope removes 'anti-Semitic' text from prayer

Interesting news from the Vatican, via the Daily Telegraph:

"The Pope is to rewrite the Good Friday prayer in the traditional Latin Missal to remove derogatory references to Jews after protests that they could damage relations between the faiths.

Pope Benedict XVI is to excise references to the "blindness" and "darkness" of the Jews in a prayer that calls for their conversion to Christianity, according to reports in Rome.

The Pope has been under pressure to change the wording of the prayer since he permitted the widespread use of the Tridentine Rite in the 1962 Latin Missal last year.

The prayer in the rite's Good Friday liturgy reads: "Almightly and everlasting God, you do not refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."

The German-based International Council for Christians and Jews wrote to the Pope last year complaining that such language was "profoundly demeaning".

Its British branch, whose presidents include Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, was also critical."



Are there any other world religions that should look at their prayers and religious texts to see if they could do with any amending? Are there any that refer to followers of another religion as "descendants of apes and pigs"?