Monsignor Olivier de Berr anger read the French bishops' Declaration of Repentance in a clear, resonant voice but he hurried through it so quickly that he garbled words and had to reread sentences. It was as if, nearly six decades after the sin it was confessing, the French Catholic Church could not wait to be done with it, to remove the terrible blot of its complicity in the Nazi extermination of nearly 320,000 French Jews.

"Before the magnitude of the drama and the extraordinary character of the crime, too many pastors, through their silence, shamed the church and her mission," said Monsignor de Berranger. "Today, we confess that this silence was a sin."

The Catholic Hierarchy timed its mea culpa to mark the anniversary of the October 3rd, 1940, Vichy government Law on the Status of Jews, which banned Jews from professions - the civil service, the military, film-making, the theatre, journalism - and prepared the way for their arrests and deaths.

Some 57 years ago today, another Vichy law decreed that Jewish immigrants who had not got French nationality were to be interned in "special camps", like the Drancy memorial camp where the church held its repentance ceremony. Some 76,000 Jews were deported from this working-class town north of Paris between 1940 and 1944; almost all of them died at Auschwitz.

"Apologising to the Jews seems to be in fashion," a Jewish man at the Drancy ceremony said to me with cynicism. It was President Jacques Chirac who opened the floodgates of guilt at a July 1995, commemoration of the "Vel d'Hiv" round-up of French Jews.

The 1940-1944 period, during which a collaborationist government led by the ageing first World War hero Marechal Philippe Petain administered part of France under German orders, has come back to haunt the country with a vengeance this autumn. Vichy has replaced the death of Princess Diana as the main theme of French newspapers, magazines and television programmes.

On Wednesday, the trial of Maurice Papon (87), a former Vichy official accused of sending 1,560 French Jews to their deaths, will open in Bordeaux. The Papon trial is also seen as part of a collective French search for absolution.

However, not all Frenchmen share the bishops' guilt feelings. The church has received hundreds of complaints from Catholics opposed to this week's ceremony, and Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, called the church's apology "scandalous".

"I find it absolutely incredible that people who weren't even born at the time are asking for forgiveness," he said.

Mr Le Pen's words seemed to hang over the 2,000 Jews and Catholics assembled at Drancy. Jewish leaders arrived flanked by bodyguards. Police searched the bags of those admitted to the camp memorial while more police paced the perimeter with dogs.

"The beast is lurking again," said Mr Henri Hajdenberg, head of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France. "It is still every bit as threatening, scarcely hiding the anti-Semitism that motivates it, the hatred of the other, be he Jew or Arab."

After the speeches, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger - a strong contender to succeed Pope John Paul II - embraced Mr Joseph Sitruk, the Grand Rabbi of France. Cardinal Lustiger was born a Jew and converted after he was adopted by a Catholic family during the war; his mother died at Auschwitz. Placards held above the crowd recalled the shamefilled names of 19 other French internment camps.

Few noticed the woman sobbing against the brown cattle car at the end of a railway track, a reminder of the livestock carriages used to transport Jews to the death camps. Jewish leaders praised the Catholics' plea for forgiveness but it was no consolation to Eliane Leibovici (70). Like many of the Holocaust survivors who attended the ceremony, she said she had never had the courage to return to Drancy before this week.

"I came here to weep because I have no graveyard to go to," Ms Leibovici said. Her Polish-born father, an immigrant tailor, was imprisoned at Drancy under the October 4th, 1940, Vichy law, and she brought food and clothing to him until he was sent to Auschwitz, where the dead were cremated and their ashes thrown into ponds.

She couldn't care less about the Catholics' declaration, she said between sobs. "Let them give me back my family. Does an apology give me back what I lost? Never forget, never forgive - that's what I taught my children."

Monsignor de Berranger called the Declaration of Repentance "an act of memory which must lead us to greater vigilance in the present and future". But the nagging question which suffused the ceremony was best expressed by Monsignor Jean-Charles Thomas, the Bishop of Versailles. "Are we being silent today about something which we may be reproached for in 50 years' time?"

In September 1987, Pope John Paul II promised that the Vatican would publish a declaration on the church's silence during the war. Jewish groups are still waiting, and some are growing impatient.

Speaking to journalists in his aircraft bound for Rio de Janeiro this week, the Pontiff commented on the French bishops' apology. "We have already asked forgiveness several times for the past, and for more recent events. It is interesting to see that it is always the Pope and the Catholic Church who must ask forgiveness and the others who remain silent. But perhaps that is as it should be."

The Pope said his attitude towards the Holocaust was clear, but he added: "We must not forget that in the world there have been several holocausts. We must not forget these other holocausts."