“It is important to acknowledge that Peres was the Foreign Minister at the time of the signature and then of the international ratification of the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel (30/12/1993 and 10/3/1994, respectively), as well as when, pursuant to the Fundamental Agreement, diplomatic relations began between such Parties (15/06/1994). Therefore one can legitimately hope that, at least for security reasons, the new Head of State will do all he can to have the historical agreement included into the Israeli legislation, to make sure it will have that effectiveness that otherwise it has not had and still does not have today, even so many years later”. This is the comment of the Franciscan jurist, father David-Maria Jaeger, an expert in juridical relations between Church and State in Israel, who is happy about the choice made by Parliament. According to Father Jaeger, "the appointment of this eighty-four-year-old man and the self-evident appropriateness of this choice show the senselessness of the offences that have been made here and there, even to people of great qualities and full of merits, in connection with their old age, as if old age in itself deprived of authority those who have received from the Providence the grace of living such a long life, to carry out tasks of great responsibility; actually the Bible teaches just the opposite”.
