Riding out for reconciliation

Sir Sigmund Sternberg: The knight with many hats
Emma Klein
Valentine Mitchell £25
(978-0-85303-835-1)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50

NO ONE has contributed more to interfaith relations in the modern era than Sir Sigmund Sternberg - Sigi to all who know him. A glance at his Who's Who entry for 2012, printed at the end of Klein's biography, indicates his international influence. The 18-year-old "friendly enemy alien" who left Budapest for Britain days before the outbreak of war has been knighted by Queen and Pope, awarded the Templeton Prize, and honoured by academies, institutions, and nations worldwide.

Yet, as in so many driven, successful, and apparently self-confident businessmen, there is an underlying insecurity in Sigi, betrayed in what Lord Carey in a foreword describes as "something very tender and childlike in his pleasure when his great gifts have been recognised". This is hardly surprising, given his formal upbringing, the sudden loss of his father at 14, and his unwilling flight to Britain, abandoning both mother and beloved sister in Hungary. But, within a remarkably short time, he had made a fortune from his metal business, and set about enriching others in an astonishing life of overwhelming generosity.

While Klein gives little information on the way in which Sigi became so rich, she does deal in two frank chapters with his two marriages, the first causing heartbreak not only to his wife Ruth, but also, one suspects, to Sigi himself. But in Hazel, his cousin's widow, he found the perfect partner, without whom, all agree, his remarkable achievements would never have been accomplished.

In the late 1970s, Sigi was asked to save the Council of Christians and Jews, then in a parlous state through lack of funding. Thereafter, interfaith relations became the passion of his life.

Klein describes his outstanding work rescuing the Council of Christians and Jews and spreading its work to other countries, becoming chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Council of Christians and Jews, establishing the Steinberg Centre for Judaism (the largest cultural centre in Europe, where he and Hazel will be buried), and co-founding the Three Faiths Forum, despite some Jewish opposition to working with Muslims. Indeed Klein's chapter on the Forum, now extending its work to other faiths, should be compulsory reading for all engaged in teaching and preaching.

But it is his work of reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church which marks Sigi's most memorable achievement, and for which he was made a Papal Knight. It was he who engineered Pope John Paul II's visit to Tempio Maggiore, the great synagogue of Rome, the first visit of a pope to a synagogue since apostolic times. Tirelessly, he sought to secure the Vatican's recognition of the State of Israel. And, to cap all, he selflessly risked his own reputation in bringing to an end the Auschwitz convent dispute, which threatened all earlier achievements in reconciling RCs and Jews.

Among other memorable achievements are his work for Rotary, his success in gaining international recognition for the heroism of Raoul Wallenberg, including raising the funds for the London statue unveiled by the Queen, and introducing interfaith dialogue into the deliberations of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A searing experience in childhood may well explain Sigi's later life. His RC nurse told him that whenever a priest approached, he and his sister must cross the road, because they were Jews and had killed Christ. No wonder that Sigi has continued to campaign for an annual special Day to commemorate Pope Paul VI's promulgation in 1965 of Nostra Aetate, absolving the Jews from the charge of deicide. It would be a fitting climax to Sigi's long and distinguished career were his wish to be granted.

Canon Anthony Phillips is a former headmaster of the King's School, Canterbury.