However, the Carmelites stayed put, and a year later erected a large cross from a 1979 mass with the Pope near their site. The World Jewish Congress Executive strongly urged the Vatican to take action against the convent's presence and said Pope John Paul II should "exercise his authority" to order the prompt removal of convent and cross. The WJC Executive said the pontiff's action was necessary to implement the agreement major European Catholic cardinals, including the cardinal of Kraków, Franciszek Macharski, had signed with Jewish leaders on 22 February 1987 in Geneva. Edgar Bronfman declared: "It is not only a matter of the Auschwitz convent, but the broader implications of historical revisionism in which the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the murder of the Jewish people is being suppressed."