Pope Francis advanced church’s relationship with Jews

JTA – Pope Francis  – who died aged 88 on Monday, one day after marking Easter with a public appearance in the Vatican – significantly advanced the Catholic Church’s relationship with Jews. He actively promoting dialogue, reconciliation, and a strong stance against antisemitism – relations that were tested after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

The first Jesuit and first Latin American pope, Francis assumed leadership of the Catholic Church in 2013 after years of building and sustaining Jewish relationships in his native Argentina. In 2010, he had co-written, with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth, a book based on their public conversations on differences and similarities between Judaism and Catholicism.

Francis met frequently with Jewish leaders and paid a state visit to Israel in 2014. He often invoked the spirit of Nostra Aetate, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965 as part of Vatican II, which repudiated centuries of anti-Jewish theology and inaugurated a new era in Catholic-Jewish relations. He controversially restricted the Latin Mass, a symbol of the pre-Vatican II church whose liturgy includes a call for the conversion of the Jews.

Francis reiterated the spirit of Nostra Aetate in 2013, speaking to the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations. “Due to our common roots, a Christian cannot be antisemitic,” the pope declared, before going on to describe his warm relations with Jewish clergy in his native Argentina.

“I had the joy of maintaining relations of sincere friendship with leaders of the Jewish world,” said Francis. “We talked often of our respective religious identities, the image of man found in the scriptures, and how to keep an awareness of G-d alive in a world now secularised in many ways … But above all, as friends, we enjoyed each other’s company, we were all enriched through encounter and dialogue, and we welcomed each other, and this helped all of us grow as people and as believers.”

Such statements sustained a relationship sometimes strained when Pope Francis adopted positions at odds with the core concerns of many Jews. In May 2015, an expansion of Vatican relations with Palestinian leadership, following the Palestinians’ unilateral pursuit of statehood, drew criticism from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who at the time viewed direct negotiations with Israel as the only credible path to peace.

Pope Francis also strongly defended the record of Pope Pius XII, whom critics accuse of having turned a blind eye to Jewish suffering in the Shoah. The Vatican has long maintained he worked behind the scenes to save Jews. In 2019, Jewish groups welcomed Pope Francis’s announcement that the Vatican Archives covering the Pius papacy would open to researchers in March 2020.

More recently, the Israel-Hamas war further strained relations between Pope Francis, Jews, and Israelis. In November 2024, citing experts saying “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”, the pope called for the charge – which Israel strenuously rejects – to be “carefully investigated”.

In December, Pope Francis attended the inauguration of a nativity scene at the Vatican that positioned baby Jesus on a keffiyeh, or Palestinian scarf – a nod to activists who have identified Jesus, a Jew born in Roman times, as a Palestinian.

Defenders of the pope said his statements about the Israel-Hamas war were in keeping with Catholic doctrine on the value of peace and human life, and did not reflect on Pope Francis’s commitment to fighting antisemitism. He also repeatedly called for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Despite the disagreements, Francis maintained warm relations with Jewish leaders involved in interfaith dialogue.

“I sorrowfully mourn the death of Pope Francis, a towering figure in our time whose leadership, compassion, and dedication to peace transcended religious boundaries,” said Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who received the papal knighthood honour from Pope Francis in New York in 2015.

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires. He served as archbishop of the Argentinian capital beginning in 1998 and as cardinal after 2001.

He was 76 when he was elected to the papacy, inheriting a church wrestling with an array of challenges, including a shortage of priests, a sexual abuse crisis, and difficulties governing the Vatican itself.

In 2018, Francis renewed his commitment to fostering relations between Catholics and Jews and condemning antisemitism.

“Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples,” Pope Francis wrote in “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), described as the flagship document of his papacy. “The friendship which has grown between us makes us bitterly and sincerely regret the terrible persecutions which they have endured, and continue to endure, especially those that have involved Christians.”