Hersh’s Hanukkah Lights
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Ten facts about Pope Francis’s troubled relations with Jews.
In his long, consequential career, Pope Francis was an insistent voice for humility within the Roman Catholic Church. Eschewing many of the traditional luxuries afforded to pontiffs, he insisted on living in relatively modest circumstances, choosing a small apartment within the Vatican instead of the usual Pope’s living quarters, and cooking his own dinners. “My people are poor, and I am one of them,” he was known to say.
In some ways, Pope Francis was a champion for Jewish causes. He counted Jews among his friends and aided researchers exploring the Catholic Church’s role in the Holocaust. Yet Pope Francis also leaves a more troubling anti-Jewish legacy. He elevated anti-Israel voices and helped stoke anti-Jewish stereotypes within the Church.
Here are 10 facts about Pope Francis’s troubled relations with Jews.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936 and became a priest in 1969. His family was part of a large community of Italian immigrants living in Argentina. According to journalist John L. Allen, Jr., Pope Francis’ grandparents fled Italy in 1927 in part because they hated fascism; they harbored deep “political and ideological revulsion to Mussolini’s Blackshirts.”
Given this family opposition to right-wing dictatorships, many were disappointed by Pope Francis’ failure in the 1970s (when he was a high-profile priest in Argentina) to speak out against the murderous excesses of the Jorge Rafaela Videla government, which killed an estimated 30,000 left-wing dissidents in Argentina’s notorious “Dirty War,” many of them Jews. While some priests did publicly do all they could to help save dissidents during this time, Pope Francis did not publicly associate himself with the movement to save political prisoners.
At the time, his sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, defended her brother, pointing out to critics her family’s anti-fascist bona fides in Italy. More recent research has shown that Pope Francis did indeed work to help some dissidents in Argentina in the 1970s, hiding dissident priests and others at a school he ran in Buenos Aires.
Pope Francis became Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. In his new role, he reached out to Buenos Aires’ sizeable Jewish community, forging friendships with prominent Jewish leaders. One of these was Rabbi Abraham Skorka, an educator and former leader of Bene Tikva Congregation in Buenos Aires. Pope Francis and Rabbi Skorka promoted interreligious dialogue. Pope Francis attended a Holocaust memorial service in Bene Tikva, and in 2010 the two men published a book together, On Heaven and Earth in which they put forward Jewish and Catholic positions on a range of issues.
“I remember the moment I suggested that we might write a book about God,” Rabbi Skorka later described. The future Pope was excited to participate. Rabbi Skorka described Pope Francis as embodying respect for Jewish views of the world.
On July 18, 1994, the deadliest terror attack in Argentina’s history took place in Buenos Aires. The Iranian-backed Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah filled a truck with high-power explosives and drove it to the Argentine Mutual Israelite Association (AMIA), a Jewish community center packed with children, families, and others. A suicide bomber detonated the truck, killing 85 people and wounding over 300 others. It emerged that the attack was planned and directed by senior Iranian politicians and was overseen by Iranian diplomats and other officials.
Pope Francis was Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires at the time. He took a stand over a decade later when he became the first public figure to sign a public petition calling for justice for the victims of the attack. (Nobody was ever convicted for the bombing and the bomber who detonated the truck was honored after his death in Lebanon.) When the rebuilt AMIA center reopened to the public in 2010, Pope Francis (Archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time) toured the rebuilt center along with local Jewish leaders.
Vatican journalist John L. Alllen Jr. notes that when Pope Frances became the Pontiff in 2013, “The forecast among those invested in Jewish-Catholic dialogue was generally rosy.” Jews “couldn’t have wished or hoped for a better pope,” ADL Director Abraham Foxman exclaimed at the time. Long accustomed to meeting with Jews, Pope Francis continued this tradition at the helm of the Catholic Church. He paid a gala visit to a synagogue in Rome, traveled to Israel, and spoke out against antisemitism.
One of his most recent condemnations of antisemitism is typical: in February 2024, amidst a terrifying spike in antisemitic attacks worldwide, Pope Francis forcefully said the Roman Catholic Church “rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning….hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Yet, despite these examples of pro-Jewish sentiment, journalist John L. Allen noted in 2023 that “the fact of the matter is that Pope Francis has had a Jewish problem, and it’s come to the fore anew amid the current war in Gaza.” Despite some friendly overtures towards Jews, Pope Francis also elevated anti-Jewish and anti-Israel voices within the Church and around the world.
Two thousand years ago, the Jewish community was riven with divisions; a group called the Pharisees maintained traditional Jewish law and practice in the face of Roman pressure to change, and evolved into today’s Jewish community.
Again and again, Pope Francis invoked the Pharisees in intensively negative terms, and described them as evil and deceitful. In one typical 2023 speech, Pope Francis said that Pharisees only “performed works to appear righteous” and that in reality these ancient righteous Jews were “duplicitous.” .
Pope Francis knew what he was doing. Catholic theology has often disparaged the Pharisees, and Pope Francis wanted to change that. In 2019, he asked Catholic researchers to come up with a more accurate view of the Pharisees to help in “combatting antisemitism” and “overcoming old prejudices.” Disappointingly, in his public speeches Pope Francis soon reverted back to traditional views of ancient Jews as lying, manipulative, untrustworthy, and evil.
In 2017, Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, the former Chief Rabbi of Milan, wrote an open letter accusing Pope Francis of anti-Jewish rhetoric. While the Pope took some positive steps to foster Catholic-Jewish dialogue, it was “a shame that they should be contradicted on a daily basis by the homilies of the Pontiff, who employs precisely the old, inveterate structure (of describing Judaism negatively) and its expressions.”
In 1965, then-Pope Paul VI issued a landmark document, the Declaration Nostra Aetate on the Church’s Relationship with Non-Christians. This groundbreaking work overturned centuries of Catholic anti-Jewish theology and declared that Jews are not guilty of killing Jesus, as Catholics had insisted for generations (and used as justification for horrific violence against Jews in the past). The Declaration also radically declared that in the view of the Roman Catholic Church, Jews are holy, Judaism is a valid religious expression, and “God holds the Jews most dear.”
To some critics, Pope Francis strayed from this doctrine, routinely employing anti-Jewish rhetoric and tropes. In one memorable 2021 sermon, Pope Francis said that only Catholicism - and not Judaism - is a valid religion, and denigrated the religious value of the Jewish Torah.
Dr. Malka Simkovitch, an expert in Catholic-Jewish relations, noted at the time that “Pope Francis’s recent reference to (Jewish) law as not life-giving is the latest remark in a string of comments which evoke old stereotypes about Jewish law and the Pharisees. These comments invite Catholics to draw a straight line from greedy and exploitative people today and to the Pharisees of the first century, and draw another line straight back to contemporary Jews.” Dr. Simkovitch noted that in many areas, Pope Francis appeared dedicated to advancing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, yet he persistently returned to anti-Jewish attitudes that the Catholic Church has tried, in recent years, to suppress.
Historians and researchers of the Holocaust will long remember Pope Francis with gratitude for his work in granting access to the Vatican archives.
When he became Pope, Francis sped up the Church’s timeline for opening Church’s records. It was a massive task, entailing 2 million documents. In 2019, to note that the Church’s records would soon be public, Pope Francis changed the name of the Vatican’s “Secret Archives” to the “Apostolic Archives.” In 2020, after over a decade of preparation, it opened to researchers.
Most highly anticipated were the Church’s records from World War II. Pope Pius XII served as Pope from 1939 to 1958, and did not speak out against the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. Pope Francis declared that the Church had “nothing to hide” and hoped that in looking at the Church’s role in the Holocaust, researchers would focus not on complicity with the Nazis, but on the fact that Catholic priests and nuns saved thousands of Jewish babies from the Nazis by hiding them in Catholic orphanages and other institutions.
Critics complained that the Vatican published select items highlighting Pope Pius XII’s role in saving some Jewish children first, as a way to generate pro-Church headlines. “After saying that years of study would be needed, now the answers emerge on the first day like a rabbit from a magician’s hat,” Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, bitterly complained.
Pope Francis was a champion of interreligious dialogue, both with Jews and with Muslims. He became close with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, and even declared that he and the Imam had a “pledge of fraternity” with each other.
This was despite Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb’s obvious and frequent antisemitism. Even the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, complained that the Imam made an antisemitic remark “every two minutes.”
For years, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, one of the most prestigious Islamic scholars in the world, has been implacably opposed to the very existence of Israel, which he refuses to call by name and instead refers to as the “Zionist entity.” After Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb praised Hamas and has been in close touch with its leadership. Instead of distancing himself from this radicalism, it seems that Pope Francis was influenced to side with radical anti-Israel figures as well.
When Pope Francis made his first visit as Pontiff to Israel, he of course traveled to Bethlehem. There, he made an unscheduled detour to visit Israel’s security barrier separating Bethlehem from Jewish towns nearby which have often found themselves the victim of terror. Pope Francis walked up to a section of the barrier that was defaced with anti-Israel graffiti and prayed there for five minutes, as if these anti-Israel phrases were a holy site.
Pope Francis made a point of calling Palestine a state and referred to leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO as leaders of the state of Palestine. In 2015, he ordered the Vatican to officially recognize Palestine as a country. The Pope made no mention of the fact that many of the lands claimed by the PLO, such as the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site, are located inside of Israel.
After Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Pope Francis’ hostility towards Israel became more pronounced.
Take his attachment to the tiny Catholic community in Gaza. For years, Hamas has persecuted Christians in Gaza. Numbering 5,000 when Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007, there are fewer than 1,000 today. Soon after taking control, Hamas (or Hamas affiliated figures) firebombed the only Christian bookshop in Gaza and kidnapped, tortured, and murdered its owner. The Church did not react. Pope Francis took little interest in Christian suffering when it came at the hands of Hamas. After Israel attacked Hamas fighters in the wake of October 7, however, Pope Francis began calling members of Gaza’s minute Catholic community daily. Even when he was deathly ill in recent weeks, these daily phone calls - and the publicity they generated in the world’s press - were one of his top priorities.
In October 2023, Pope Francis was asked to meet with family members of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. He refused, saying he was too busy. Pope Francis later changed his mind and agreed - on condition that he also meet (on the same day) people from Gaza and hear their thoughts about Israel’s attempts to root out Hamas soldiers. This attempt to “balance” Israel’s self-defensive war with Hamas’ actions continued over the next year and a half.
Pope Francis routinely attacked Israel for killing civilians, without criticizing Hamas for hiding their fighters and rocket launchers in schools, hospitals, mosques, apartment buildings, and UN structures. His pre-Christmas address in 2024 was typical: “Yesterday, children were bombed,” he intoned at the beginning of his speech. He made it clear that he blamed not Hamas for hiding among civilians, but Israel, for each and every civilian casualty: “This is cruelty. This is not war.” (Israel’s Foreign Ministry later accused the Pontiff of displaying double standards when it came to Israel.)
Pope Francis did call out Hamas as “evil” and called for them to return Israeli hostages. Yet these moments of moral clarity were overshadowed by Pope Francis’ frequently harsh and unjustified attacks on Israel. As the war went on, he ramped up his language, calling Israel’s self-defensive war in Gaza “disproportionate” and “immoral.” In a book he published in November in 2024, Pope Francis referring to Israel’s war on Hamas as “a genocide” and urged the world to investigate.
A month later, Pope Francis was present at a ceremony unveiling a nativity scene in the Vatican featuring a baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh. Also present was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has attempted to rewrite history, claiming that Jesus was not Jewish but Palestinian. At the ceremony, Pope Francis made no move to correct this egregious mistake.
Pope Francis was a complex man. As the world mourns his passing, let’s recall the many consequential actions he took - both those that helped Jews and those that harmed us - over the course of his long, eventful life.
Here we go again! Another antisemite. Not surprised! He played the Jewish community with a scrap here and there, but ultimately he was definitely pro Hamas; therefore anti Jews.
As a child of Holocaust survivors, it’s very sad that thousands of years of Jew hatred has not changed one iota!! We’re still the “bad and evil” guys, constantly being scapegoated and yet only .02 percent of the world population. Makes no sense!!
Therefore, we the Jews, have to stand up for ourselves but our Jewish organizations don’t do anything worthwhile. They, for sure, haven’t learned anything from the past Jewish meekness and attitude of “it’ll pass “!
So, we’re back to 80 years ago; no one protecting us, not even our own!! Very sad!!
I am so grateful for this article. I had no idea of who this pope really was. Everyone speaks so wonderfully about this man. Calling him, “the people’s pope”. I learned a lot. He really wasn’t for the Jews at all. He really was not a good man. Well I’m not surprised. We can only count on our people and sometimes unfortunately not even.
When my Catholic nieghbour attacked Jews as greedy murderers I started to avoid her. I learned later where her information came from.
1.4 billion Catholics turned anti semetic by the Pope.
Unfortunately, yes.
This Pope, since the Obama administration, been a political porn for the Anti-Israel, Anti-American stance. When there was an ISIS murdering Christians of the middle East, he did nothing. When the Palestinians murder Jews every week, he saids nothing. When Evil is being murdered by Israel, he sides with Evil. When Abbas, President of Palestine, visited the vatican = Convinced the Palestinians were living in the middle East before the Jews. He then changed the Jewish cloth of Jesus, on the Nativity Scene, and placed a Palestinian cloth on the back of that Donkey. What does this mean if you are an intellect - It means that the Church falls under Mecca, and the belief in JC is no longer valid. Mohammed is the light and Moses, Jesus amongst many other are sub prophets.
Very sad.
Your discussion of Pope Francis and the Jews was quite interesting but incomplete. Pope Francis ignored the policies established by the Popes before him starting with Pope John XXIII. In his pilgrimage, Pope Francis visited holy places in Jordan, in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. But he did not visit the Galilee where Jesus had his primary ministry and where he anointed Peter as the first Bishop of Rome.
On 21 March 2000, Pope John Paul II arrived in Israel for a historic five-day pilgrimage. He visited the Church of the Primacy in the Galilee. He leaned over and kissed and blessed the rock where Jesus is said to have shared a breakfast of fish with his disciples. He voiced the hope that future Popes would follow his example.
Sadly, he was like every other Pope. In the final analysis, anti-Jewish.
Absolutely!
Francis wanted to reconcile all the sons of Avraham and it is impossible to take side, even the right side, when haters prevail among both. Of course HAMAS are criminals and hiding below hospitals is doubly so, but this cannot be used as an excuse to take innocent lives. Unfortunately, Israel was always led to ruins by not resisting to political extremists. This happened with the Babylonians and with the Romans and this is the way Israel is heading now and Francis was trying to avert. What might happen in the next fifty years is pretty clear, very very sadly. All Palestinians will be kicked out, then a religious extremist will place a bomb below the Omar mosque because he wants to build the Third Temple. Then an Arab will feel no restraint to place one or more atomic bombs in Israel.
So Jews should just let themselves be killed, is what you're saying.
The method of political extremism is propagating the idea that there is no alternative to it and, if anybody doubts it, just kill him. This is what happened to Rabin and Gedaliah. As you were not able to reply, you simply creatively assumed that I said something different. I never said that Jews should not have reacted militarily and strongly so.
Unfortunately, the government of Israel reacted exactly as HAMAS wanted. It destroyed the image of Israel as a civilized country and prepared millions of future Palestinian and Arab terrorists. Hitting nuclear installations in Iran will further the life of this government but will be just one more step downwards.
Francis was at his core an antisemite.
Closer to the truth is that he was a man confused, aloof, and indecisive in his thoughts and actions. A blanket statement that the Pope was an antisemite negates any good deeds.
It is sad that children in Gaza were killed. It is even sadder that Hamas built tunnels, stored ammunition and shot rockets in the middle of civilian homes, schools, hospitals and mosques.
It is even sadder that Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. What would you do if your loved ones were taken hostage, Alberto? If your loved ones would have been killed? Would you just sit back?
Anyone who know any history knows that Palestine didn't exist until 40 years after Jesus died. To call Jesus "Palestinian" is totally political and blatantly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
Palestine is a geographic expression meaning "land of the Philistines". Ethnic hatred between sons of Avraham converted the name "Palestinian" into denoting an ethnic faction. When calling Jesus a "Palestinian" Mahmoud Abbas was certainly very bold and provocatory but certainly moving away from ethnic classifications. If Jesus is a Palestinian all Jews are Palestinians too. Francis did not react because he always fougth for "building bridges, not walls".
Even Catholics were upset by Jesus dressed as a Palestinian. The reason it was removed. Perhaps Muslims will stop murdering Christians if the word reaches them that Jesus was an Arab.
Well said
I ask people to tell me what the USA would do in retaliation to a terrorist group who subjected a town in the USA to the cruel barbaric actions inflicted upon Israelis on Oct 7th. I wonder if the Pope would have sided against the USA.
Sounds antisemetic to me.
What else is new? My late husband was an
extremely courageous veteran of the Yom Kippur War and born and raised in Argentina. He always taught me and spoke candidly snd intelligently about such situations and the precursors to the bombing of AMIA. I would not say in Spanish or Hebrew in polite conversation what he would say in response to all this nonsense when 59 Jews (alive or dead) are still kept hostage!
Pope Francis was dearly concerned with the environment (remember the wierd light show on the Vatican church?). He also apologized to the native people of Canada for the residential school mass murders (thought there were no remains found?) Does the support for Hamas and the Gazans sounds familiar? Bergoglio was a Marxist /Globalist like the Latin American Catholic "Liberation Theology". His tactics were similar to those of the WEF to help form a Global CCP-like government in the West. In fact, both Bergoglio and Klaus Schwab had the same spiritual teacher in Dom Guéranger, a monk who died 150 years ago said to be responsible for Vatican II (Globalist). Israel and Jews in general are a threat to Marxist / Fascist Globalists. Pope Francis heeded his masters.
Thanks for your article Doc. I've learned a lot. I was born as catholic but I'm trying to practice Judaism in my own little way.
Christian convert to Judiasm. Only religion where after the conversion those born to it ask if you have "masochistic" tendencies. "YOU were born a WASP, why would you want to be a Jew?" I live in a suburb with many holocaust survivors.
I have just read this ill-informed article published on the day of the Pope's death no less. Were one to write something in a similar vein about a leading Jewish religious figure on the day of his death, it would be considered anti-Semitic. Please remove me from your mailing list. I do not need this hate-fuelled material coming onto my screen.
Ha-Shem G-D, will judge all of us, measure for measure. October 7th is a reminder to all of us that these savages not only murder their own people and children and babies will never enter The World To Come. Whether it's the Pope or a regular soul, G-D determines the fate of his servants, the Jewish People. We suffered plenty for people that took the side of Enemies of our Jewish brothers and Sisters. If you have nothing kind to share about G-D'S Chosen Children, let's all pray that the pope , prays for all of us, especially the Jewish Nation, Israel and it's People!!!
No "leading Jewish figure" has done harm to Catholics. Given the horrendous tortures Jews have endured for centuries at the hands of Catholics, and given the fact that this pope ----typically-----tried to look righteous to both sides of the Islamic-Jewish conflict in Israel------we owe this pope nothing.
Was the Pope wrong to condemn the continual taking of innocent Palestinian lives? This is in no way an excuse for the utterly vile crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th. Should women and children pay the price for what they've done?
It didn't take long for you to go from defending the Pope to attacking Israel.
I am attacking not Israel but the Israeli leadership that is allowing for the killing of innocent people. I condemn Hamas in the clearest terms. I condemn Netanyahu.
You condemn Netanyahu?! How dare you? he is fighting a death cult. Arab Nazis who want to destroy the Jews and the Jewish state and you condemn him? Who do you think you are? Have you been to Israel? did you go out in the streets of the Arab cities in Judea and Samaria and talked to the "innocent" people there? I "love" the useful idiots who know nothing and have no idea what is the state facing since it's inception and people like you tell us what we should or should not do. Shame on you.
I have never trusted Netanyahu, and I know Jewish people who don't. Yes, I've been to Israel. And don't call me antisemitic because I don't trust Netanyahu. I am in a Jewish family, I have donated blood to Israel. But I don't like what Netanyahu has done in Gaza. And yes, Hamas is evil. Why aren't the hostages freed yet?
The reason Israel exists is because after WW11 ended the Jews who survived were being murdered for trying to take their property back. No one in Europe cared. They were only Jews. Had the European Christians supported them in regaining what had been stolen, Jews would have continued to buy
Land in Israel, as they had been doing since the late 1800s.
Should Ukraine not fight back. They were attacked. Had they surrendered Russian and Ukrainian children would have been saved.
For that they need to turn to their Hamas leaders. Israel is protecting itself from evil and they have the full right to do so. By your name you are Polish so I am not surprised by what you wrote. Your people have a very long history of murdering Jews. Part of it is because the preaching of the catholic church. Be honest. You know it is the truth.
You are disgusting. My family saved a Jewish family at the risk of their own lives. Oh, and given your warped view of things, they did not do it for money. Shame on you. Read some history.
Apologies for calling you disgusting. It was actually worse of me to mention my family saving Jews. There was no need to defend myself against such an utterly crude remark as you made against me. If you knew your history better, you would discover that one reason Poland had such a large Jewish population was that it offered a haven to Jews escaping Russian programs. I do not deny that antisemitism existed in Poland, but I would like to remind you that it was the Nazis who murdered the Jews on Polish territory. Also if you knew your facts and figures, you would realise that of approximately 6 million people who died in Poland half were Jews. Also I refer to the work of my late friend Harvey Sarner who was involved with the Garden of the Righteous, who proved that Poles formed the majority.
Shame on me? your people murdered my whole family and I don't know my history? How dare you?The poles that saved Jewish people you can count them on maybe 2 hands. It is very nice that some in your family showed human feeling and saved people. But your insinuations, your personal feelings, come through very clearly. Don't you dare lecture me. I can teach you a thing or two about my peoples history. And for that matter, about your peoples history. How about the Poles collaboration with the Nazis? Yes there were, as I said, some Poles who risked their lives and saved some Jews but these righteous among nations were a drop in the bucket. Shall I remind you what the Poles did after the war when some of the survivors went back home to look for family members and they were murdered?
I am hugely aware of what happened after the war with the returning survivors. The stain of that event will forever be a stain on Poland. It was a Catholic Pole who wrote a book on the subject. And there were considerably more than just a handful of Poles who helped and rescued Jews. My objection was to the tenor and the hatred (and inaccuracy) expressed towards Pope Francis in the comments section of this website to which I will never return.
Why did you even join this site??? I don’t get it??
It's never all. There were Polish families who convinced Jewish parents with blonde children to let them be saved. Hitler treated Polish people in the same way he treated Jews. 3 million non Jewish Polish people died in the ovens. Many more starved in Siberia before the Royal Navy arrived to move them.
Also may I remind you that Pope John Paul II called antisemitism a sin. I congratulate him for that.
My friends of Polish decent readily admitt that the Church in Poland taught the Jews killed Jesus. In 2019 I walked out of a gathering because a woman of Polish ethnicity was screaming "the Jews killed Jesus" loudly.
Innocent lives are lost in a war no matter how much we try to avoid it. Intent is crucial. How do you compare the Gazans’ intentions with Israel’s?
By the way, innocent Israeli lives are also being taken, such as the 12 Druze children killed at Magdal Shams. Don’t remember hearing that condemned.
I condemn all terrorism.
The Pope didn’t.
Innocent?! There is not even one innocent Arab in Gaza.
Not true. Some tried to march against Hamas. Tortured and killed.
You love to mourn dead Jews and yet will not do a darn thing to protect living ones. Just like most of the rest of Europe
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Antisemitism is rooted in indifference, which blinds people to the harm they cause. Hamas thrives on a culture of death, fueled by an indifferent distortion of Islam, totalitarian and suppressive like a cancer. Cancer treatments have prolonged life but not cured the disease; similarly, efforts against ideologies of hate have slowed their spread but not eradicated them. The true solution lies in fostering a culture of vigilance, compassion, and moral courage - the direct antidote to indifference.
Women and children always pay the price. They are dying in Russia because of Putins actions. I see no tears being shed for them, many are Christians.
You are absolutely right.
Agreed
The truth hurts
How lucky you are in possession of it then.
In what way is the article “ill informed”? If a Jewish leader (alive or dead) was given so balanced an analysis it would be remarkable!
Just don’t click on and read it
Obviously your not a Jew dealing with the derogatory comments about Israel from people you once viewed as friends. None were anti semetic until Francis convinced them it was Israel that was the aggressor.
I feel sorry for you!
The articl has a glaring inaccuracy. It states the Vatican's "Nostra Aetate" acquitted the Jews of killing Jesus. It did not. It "forgave" them." A helluva difference.
Correct.
Pontius Pilate and his Roman soldiers killed Jesus, as some of the Pharisees were complicit in the events that led to the crucifixion. The Church should make full forgiveness to the Jews once and for all.
The Roman's crucified so many they ran out of trees. Anyone capable of attracting a crowd was crucified. Rome had to do this to maintain control of the huge area of the world they controlled. The Barabas story was inserted into the New Testament after Jews stopped converting and Roman's started. The one handing out orders for Crucification never met with the condemned.
Jews have problems with everyone, including Jews. Joseph Campbell explains it all very clearly. There was an early proto-Christian, Original of Alexandria, who was concocting a Christianity that had no connection or dependence on Judaism. Imagine that! He didn’t get very far because his Jewish followers in Alexandria couldn’t abide anything that wasn’t ultimately about judea and Jews, so they murdered him.
No such person ever existed.
The ancient imagination is active so it can justify its antisemitic sentiments and tropes.
The Catholic Church joined the Nazi party to murder the Jews, I will never have any use for the Catholic Church.
The Nazis( may their name be erased) escaped to Argentina after the Holocaust because Peron loved the Nazis ( may their name be erased) and didn't end up at the Nuranburg Trials to have justice done for their war crimes, also the Vatican also helped the Nazis( may their name be erased) esca0e justice for their war crimes, I am showing you prove that you are more then 100% right
I have quiet a few catholic friends who are like family to me and they feel exactly like you. And that is because they are open and truthful people who see the church for what it was and is.
My father-in-law and his brother were saved by nuns running a Catholic convent orphanage in France from 1940-45. At minimum, these women risked their freedom and property; they may have risked their lives as well. Furthermore, the Vatican is entirely surrounded by Italy, then under the control of the Fascists. It’s questionable whether pro-Jewish remarks by a pope would have been permitted to be heard by the outside world.
I think that this Pope was a detriment for the Jews. He said not one word when the Palestinians wrapped the baby Jesus in a keffiyah at Christmastime. But he loudly said that there was genocide in Gaza. I had no use for him. I hope that the next Pope, whoever he may be, has a different outlook on things.
I won't hold my breathe, it could be the same thing, another big anti semite
How could he defend jews when he barely spoke about the christians of the middle east who have been massacred during his tenure? Christians butchered in Darfour, Soudan... or lately 80 beheaded in Congo? He was bestie witht the Sheikh in Egypt but there are no more christians or coptes in Egypt anymore.
While various sources give us different numbers, Coptic Egyptians are estimated to number between 5% and 10% of the population in that country. More likely it is on the lower side so there are about 4m -7m of them. They are a very repressed group.
True . I have Coptic friens and they are constantly in danger.
It is perplexing that the Pope does not speak out against Muslium persecution of Christians. After all he is the Pope, is not that is Job!!!!! I do not get it.
He forgot about the Christians and favorited the Muslims, did he forget that he is the leader of the Catholic religion, and not a clergy for the Muslims
Excellent point
So true
I consider him a disaster all around for everyone and everything. He may have been a nice guy, etc. but as a leader of a church and on the world stage, a total failure.
Based on this summary, he lacked moral clarity, a basic ingredient one would expect in any spiritual leader, most certainly on the level of pope
How disappointing, especually for Catholics
I will not mourn his passing. I think he was an antisemite, trying to "pass" as someone with morals. It's his antisemitical comments that have allowed people like newly Catholic Candace Owens to spout her antisemitic lies, learned at the feet of a Catholic antisemite.
I hadn't heard of Candace Owens, so I had to look her up. Oh my! She's a terrible person.
Pope Francis - exemplified - the two-sided position - of the Catholic Churches doctrine - for thousands of years. Which way should we as Jews - respectfully take - acknowledging him - as a man - made in G-D's Image & Likeness - yet - in showing/exposing him - & his false doctrine.
Amen to that. We who love Israel - from whatever religious background - should now pray for a Pope who also loves the Land and the People of Israel. Someone who will follow in the footsteps of Popes such as Paul VI, St John Paul II and Benedict XVI. who all had good relationships with Israel. And NOT Pope Francis. My heart sank when I watched his visit to Bethlehem and saw him choose the graffiti-marred security barrier as a background to his photo-op. My opinion of him did not improve.
Not going to miss him and I know plenty of Catholics who feel the same way
True. Many Catholics want real change in their church.
But not when it comes to respecting Jews.
Most of them don't because for centuries they were brainwashed to hate the "Jesus killers". It is embedded in them. Mind you, there is a minority who use their brains and understand what the church had done.
I was very disappointed that this Pope took an anti Israel approach to the current conflict with Hamas. He also seemed to ignore the 1964 doctrine that stopped blaming Jews for the killing of Jesus. I found him very disturbing to the Jewish people and hope the next Pope will be chosen on a fair and non political approach. Jews don't need any more hatred given to them for no reason. Part of me felt that he was being paid off by Muslim money to the church..
I would not be surprised as the church is in dire need for money.
The Church has always been a political entity.
The 30,000 “disappeared” figure is contested by the official National Commission on the Disappearance and the left-wing Montonero command which agreed that approximately +11,000 Argentineans were extra-judicially murdered by the Videla regime. At that time Argentina as a Catholic nation had no divorce procedures and the bulk of the difference between the 30,000 claimed and the +11,000 documented appear to be due to husbands abandoning wives and families and “disappearing” into new identities at a time when electronic documentation and tracking was lacking.
Videla did the right thing considering how dedicated a certain group was to foisting murderous communism on the country.
I agree
so murder is justified when someone does not agree with you. You are a Mussolini dude
Seems like he's passed away just in time and we will hopefully see a better man become the next Pope, someone who can at least steer his followers in a more positive direction when it comes to Israel and the Jews. We've had enough of important figures in the world taking the side of the evil attackers. God is listening and watching.
Respectfully, but hoping for a pope who will properly steer Catholics in the right direction vis a vis Jews is like believing in unicorns.
Unfortunately you are right.
There is always the rhino 🦏 !
Amen
Ultimately, this Pope was decidedly EVIL to the Jews. As long as he was [relatively] powerless, THEN he could say "nice things", be friendly with Rabbis, and [meaninglessly] condemn antisemitism.
When he became Pope, his true colors emerged. Like the ORIGINAL Jesuits, he used antisemitic tropes and demonized the State of Israel while -- effectively -- praising the Monsters of HAMAS.
I am quite sure that there will be a very "warm" place waiting for him where he will receive the punishment that he really deserves.
And, if anyone has any doubts, simply compare him to Pope John XXXIII
Sadly, this Pope continues the long history of non-Jews’ hatred toward the Jewish People. Hopefully, his successor will be a better man.
I always presumed that the Pope was impartial,the Torah teaches us to love all faiths,however the Vatican seems to have double standards,i wonder if they receive millions of dollars from the Arab States that of course also fund Hammas.
What is written in this article is sadly the truth, it is a repetition of what was and continues to be done to Jewish people around the world.
That said, the Jewish people and the state of Israel are and always will be protected by God.
Since, the beginning of time Jews are vilified, brutalized and some have even tried to eradicate them from the surface of the planet, yet here they are today in spite of all the crimes which are continuously perpetrated against them. The Jewish population continues to grow and contribute to the world.
The state of Israel, stronger, resilient, a source of hope and justice for people of the word.
Many leaders have tried but failed to defame and destroy the Jews and Israel!
Right. Jews are innocent, always.
no one said that.
Oh boy, your true colours came through. Now we know what you are.
It is always like that. Wait a second and the truth will come out.
Not always, but more often than not.
Take for example the Shabra and Shatila massacre. This was performed by the Christian South Lebanese Army on their Moslem fellow Lebanese. So ultimately they are responsible.
However, the SLA had the opportunity to perform the massacre because Israel gave them control of the area - so Israel must bear some of the responsibility for the outcome.
Yet the reason Israel handed over control of the area to the SLA was due to relentless pressure from the International Community - so the International Community as a whole is also complicit in the massacre.
As you see, nothing in this world is ever simple. This article strives for a balanced view; more cannot be hoped for.
Whatever you sccise the Jews of, look in the mirror and you will see ot in yourself.