In the dialogue between the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni (in the photo), and the “dissident” Jewish journalist Gad Lerner – collected in a book just released in Italy, entitled “Jews at war” – a whole chapter is dedicated to relations between the Church of Rome and Israel. With observations of great interest, all the more after the yes from Hamas to the release of all hostages and after the remarks of Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin to "L’Osservatore Romano,"on the second anniversary of the slaughter of October 7.
Di Segni immediately makes it clear that “the Jewish condition is complex ; it is a mixture of religion and nation.” And it is precisely the Catholic Church’s responses to this complexity, with their oscillations and contradictions, that have marked the ups and downs of the relationship between the two faiths in recent decades.
In the judgment of Rome’s chief rabbi, the high point of this dialogue was reached with Benedict XVI, who “wrote very important and positive things about Judaism.”
Benedict XVI was able to get to the heart of the “incomprehension” between the two faiths. “While Christians find it incomprehensible that Jews should not believe in Christ, Jews find it incomprehensible that Christians should believe in him. This mutual incomprehension can lead to aggression or a lack of communication, or it can be avoided by postponing it until the end of time, thinking instead about what to do together today.” And it is this “practical aspect of the dialogue that essentially prevailed with Benedict XVI, in spite of his toughness of principle.”
In fact, with Joseph Ratzinger as pope this is precisely what happened. In the first of his three volumes on “Jesus of Nazareth,” commenting on the Sermon on the Mount, he credited the writings of the American rabbi Jacob Neusner, who imagined himself as a contemporary and hearer of Jesus, with having “opened my eyes to the greatness of Jesus’ words and to the choice that the gospel places before us,” through the “frankness and respect” with which that believing Jew said that he could not follow Jesus.
And again, to show how much Benedict XVI went to the heart of the two faiths, one can cite his rejection of the expression “elder brothers,” with which many popes, from John XXIII to Francis, addressed the Jews. For him this expression “cannot be well received by them, because in Jewish tradition the ‘elder brother,’ namely Esau, is also the abject brother.” In his judgment the Jews are rather “our ‘fathers in faith,’” an expression that “describes our relationship more clearly.”
But then with Francis much was changed, in Di Segni’s judgment. And for the worse.
A premonitory sign, related in the book by Lerner, was Francis’s visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome on January 17, 2016, on which the pope “carefully avoided mentioning the State of Israel” and therefore “the special bond with the land” that characterizes the Jewish people.
On that occasion the chief rabbi of Rome, in welcoming his guest, did not fail to protest this silence : “So many signs,” he said, “reaffirm the essential and religious relationship that we have with the land that was promised to us. Understanding this bond should not be a difficulty for those who respect the Bible, but it still is.”
In effect the Holy See, in its approach to the existence of the State of Israel, has always moved from “a perspective that is not religious in itself, but refers to the common principles of international law,” as set forth in “La Civiltà Cattolica” of May 16, 2024, by David Neuhaus, a Jewish Jesuit and Israeli citizen, a great expert on Judeo-Christian dialogue.
But it is evident that this touches on a very sensitive point in the relationship between the Catholic Church and Israel, and in his book Rabbi Di Segni has fully brought this to light.
Christians and Jews, he says, have the Hebrew Bible in common, but “the interpretations can be radically different. From the opening pages of the first book, Genesis, the theme of the promise of the land to the descendants of the patriarchs is central, at least in the Jewish experience.” But “for Christians the central theme is another : the proclamation of the Messiah.” And for centuries their conviction had been that the Jews could not return to their land until they recognized the Messiah in Jesus, whom they had instead killed.
But now that “the old answer no longer works,” Di Segni continues, “a Catholic believer should consider a problem of interpretation. Pope Benedict XVI had said something to this effect, even if not so explicitly from the doctrinal point of view.”
But with Francis ? Rabbi Di Segni’s judgment on the penultimate pope is very critical.
Regarding the conflict in Gaza, “Pope Francis’s choice of which side to take was already clear in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, when he denounced as terrorism both the action of Hamas and the feared Israeli response, whatever it might have been.”
This equating was fleshed out in particular by the audience on equal terms that Francis gave on November 22 to the families of Jewish hostages held by Hamas and to the relatives of Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons, accompanied by the declaration that the war launched by Israel “is terrorism,” and indeed “is genocide.”
After October 7, Di Segni says, “one would have expected empathy and solidarity from friends.” On the contrary, “they have come to a cold neutrality, if not open alignment with the other side […], to the point of praising the Iranian government,” as would in fact take place after an audience of the pope with Ebrahim Raisi, according to the account released by the then-president of Iran.
And at the root of this attitude of Francis’s, according to the chief rabbi of Rome, there were “two specific motives”: the first, “concern for the fate of Christians in Arab countries,” with the resulting “compromises with Islamic regimes”; the second, “Pope Francis’s provenance and original culture, more Third Worldist than Western.”
That Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s geographical origins influenced his geopolitical vision is a thesis also shared and expressed by David Neuhaus, in his aforementioned article in “La Civiltà Cattolica.”
So it comes as no surprise that Francis should have received much public criticism from representatives of the rabbinate and of Judaism all over the world. Without that pope ever showing he had taken note.
Because in Francis’s attitude toward Judaism his silences also made news.
Lastly with his sudden decision to break off with rapid greetings, without reading the speech prepared for the occasion, the audience granted on November 6, 2023, to a delegation of European rabbis.
But even before that, not to be forgotten is a precedent from May 9, 2019, which had to do with his habit of disqualifying his opponents by applying the epithet “Pharisees” to them, in the sense of hypocrites, greedy, legalists, vain.
In a conversation that they had had with Francis, the rabbis Di Segni and Giuseppe Laras had pleaded with him to stop using the term “Pharisee” in an offensive way. And Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of relations with Judaism, had arranged to remedy this by preparing a speech for the pope to read at an international conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, dedicated precisely to the topic “Jesus and the Pharisees.”
The speech highlighted that in the New Testament there are not only the clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees. In it are also found the praises of the two Pharisees Gamaliel and Nicodemus. Jesus himself says that there are Pharisees “close to the kingdom of heaven” because of the primacy that they give to the commandment of love of God and neighbor. There is the pride with which the apostle Paul describes himself as a Pharisee. Just the opposite of the negative stereotype often used by the pope.
But incredibly, Francis declined to read that speech and limited himself to greeting those present.
Also with Pope Francis’s accusation of “genocide” against Israel there were repeated attempts to dampen its effect, on the part of the Vatican secretariat of state and press office. Without results.
With the new pope, Leo XIV, the Israel chapter is still entirely to be dealt with. But at least, right from the start, with an abundance of clarity in the distinct and sometimes far different positions, as was seen after the bombing of the Catholic church in Gaza and after his tense conversation with Israeli president Isaac Herzog, related in respective statements of great dissonance. In his interview with Elise Ann Allen in the book released on September 18, there is little on Israel, except this clarification on “genocide”:
“Officially, the Holy See does not believe that we can make any declaration at this time about that. There’s a very technical definition about what genocide might be, but more and more people are raising the issue, including two human rights groups in Israel.”
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
