Over the course of his long and controversial career, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger - a Jew - has had many titles. Now he has one more - "adviser to the Pope".

According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Nov. 4, 2006 , Pope Benedict XVI has invited the 83-year-old former adviser to Richard Nixon to be a "political consultant", and Kissinger has accepted.

Quoting an authoritative diplomatic source at the "Holy See", the paper reported that the Jewish "Nobel laureate" was asked at a recent private audience with the "Holy Father" to form part of a papal “advisory board” on foreign and political affairs.

There is speculation on which issues Kissinger would advise the Holy Father. Relations with Islam, Palestine and Israel, and Iraq - Kissinger opposes a quick US withdrawal from Iraq- are likely to be high up on the agenda.

It has also been speculated that, in view of the Muslim hostility to Benedict’s recent Regensburg speech, Kissinger might provide advice on dealing with an increasingly fractious Islamic world.

“The idea [of his appointment] sounds like a good one,” said veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister. “ But so would it also be to consult other experts on geopolitics.”

As other possible expert adviser, is the Jewish Islamophobe Bernard Lewis, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

Pope John Paul II was close friend with the Zbigniew Brzezinski - a Jew - , the Polish-born national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In recent years, other Jewish figures invited to share their "expertise" with the Holy See have included Paul Wolfowitz - the ideologist and philosopher of US War  invasion against Iraq - a former President Bush adviser and now president of the World Bank.

The pontifical academies also regularly call on academic "experts as "consultants", such as Rita Levi-Montalcini. Most of these experts are Jewish and not Catholic.

This appointment of Kissinger is likely to cause some unease, however. While others object to the Pope consulting with someone who has been widely identified with the Jewish "realpolitik" school of political analysis, an approach that places practical considerations before morality.

This reported enlistment of Kissinger as a papal adviser would really show Benedict XVI as someone who’s willing to listen to other voices in accordance with his own views.

Ahmed Rami