New Pope Makes Historic Gesture to Jews
On first day of papacy, Pope Leo XIV, in a letter to an American Jewish Committee leader, promises to work for progress in Jewish-Catholic relations.
On the first day of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV pledged “to continue and strengthen the Church’s dialogue and cooperation with the Jewish people.”
The pledge from the newly installed leader of nearly one and a half billion Roman Catholics, came in a letter to Rabbi Noam Marens, the American Jewish Committee’s Director of Interreligious Affairs.
Pope Leo’s gesture to the rabbi, so early in his papacy, was unprecedented and was taken as a strong signal that Catholic-Jewish relations might continue to grow, despite the dramatic rise in antisemitism around the world.
Just a week after the Pope’s historic message, Rabbi Marens attended the new pontiff’s Inauguration Mass and personally thanked him for his gesture. Rabbi Marens presented him with a copy of “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition,” which was recently published in a partnership between the AJC and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The publication is a glossary of terms, themes, and memes by the AJC that are found in antisemitic publications and features a Catholic commentary on the work.
In disclosing the Pope’s letter, Rabbi Marens wrote, “This meeting capped off an extraordinary few weeks of dialogue between AJC and the Catholic Church, building upon our decades of advancing Catholic-Jewish relations in the United States, Israel, Rome, and around the world.”
The gesture comes during the 60th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate document which was passed by the Second Vatican Council in October 1965. It was the first document in the church’s 2,000-year history to address the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Among its most important sections was a statement absolving Jews of deicide, the charge of “Christ-killing” that has poisoned relations between the two faiths for centuries.
Rabbi Marens’ predecessor at the AJC, Rabbi David Rosen, reflected on the state of Catholic Jewish relations in a conversation at the AJC’s Global Forum at the end of April in New York City. It was attended by a significant number of members of the AJC in Atlanta led by Dov Wilker, the Southeast regional director of the AJC.
Rabbi Rosen characterized the Jewish-Catholic relation today as “a golden era” in sharp contrast to how Jews were seen as recently as the beginning of the 20th century.
The Pope then, Pope Pius X, refused to even consider the possibility of a Jewish state in the Middle East because he was hostile to the idea that Jews could ever return to their homeland. Over the past hundred years, particularly during the tenure of the last three popes, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, that attitude has been reversed, dramatically.
“We’ve had three popes who have had state visits to Israel,” Rabbi Rosen noted, “giving its highest elected officials and religious leaders the greatest respect and recognition. Three popes who have condemned antisemitism as a sin against G-d and man. And Pope Francis has articulated also the idea that it’s impossible to be a true Christian and be an antisemite.”
Rabbi Rosen went on to describe the new relationship the Jewish people have had with the Catholic Church as “one of the great triumphs of history.” He described the Church as an institution today that listens to the concerns of Jewish leaders and engages with them. All this, despite the intense hostility of the Catholic Church in times past and the atrocities that were committed in the Church’s name.
“To have gone from that,” Rabbi Rosen emphasized, “to a situation where now these three popes have all spoken of us as the dearly elder brother of the Church of the original covenant, never broken and never to be broken. There is nothing like that in human history.”
Another step forward came in 1993 when the Vatican and Israel, which had not had any formal diplomatic relationship, agreed to full diplomatic ties and an exchange of ambassadors.
The decisive passage of the Nostra Aetate document in 1965 came, in part, from the work of two influential American church leaders, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York and Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston.
In a powerful speech in St. Peters Basilica during the deliberations, Cardinal Cushing spoke out forcefully for an end to the hatred of Jews.
“There is no Christian rationale — neither theological nor historical — for any iniquity, hatred or persecution of our Jewish brothers … In this our age (of the Holocaust), how many Jews have suffered? How many have died because of the indifference of Christians, because of silence? Let our voices humbly cry out now!”
The document was adopted six decades ago, by a vote of 2,221 to 88. In his historic public gesture to Jews, the new Pope, the first American to hold that office, may have found inspiration in those historic words.
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