Pope Francis: Reflecting on a Complicated History with Israel

In Pope Francis’ “Urbi et Orbi” message delivered on Easter Sunday at St. Peter’s Square less than a day before he died of a massive stroke, he said this about the Middle East:

“… I would like us to renew our hope that peace is possible! From the Holy Sepulcher, the Church of the Resurrection, where this year Easter is being celebrated by Catholics and Orthodox on the same day, may the light of peace radiate throughout the Holy Land and the entire world. I express my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. The growing climate of anti-Semitism throughout the world is worrisome. Yet at the same time, I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation. I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!

“Let us pray for the Christian communities in Lebanon and in Syria, presently experiencing a delicate transition in its history. They aspire to stability and to participation in the life of their respective nations. I urge the whole Church to keep the Christians of the beloved Middle East in its thoughts and prayers…”

If these carefully crafted words were the only thoughts that Pope uttered about the Israel/Hamas war, we could conclude that the pontiff had checked all the boxes Israel and world Jewry have been so worried about: Pope Francis called for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages; the Pope acknowledged the suffering of Israelis during this conflict; he even worried about the growing antisemitism in the world.

But the papal track record from October 7 until his passing has diminished his legacy with world Jewry. He not only failed to provide moral clarity in the wake of the worst single mass murder of Jews since the Shoah, but his declarations during these tragic months actually contributed to the climate of antisemitism and the worldwide campaign that cast Israel as the perpetrator and Hamas as the victim.

One line in his new book, Hope Never Disappoints immediately became an international headline as it suggested that an alleged, possible genocide committed by Israel on the Palestinians in Gaza should be “investigated.” The implication is that Israel’s war in Gaza was being carried out with a malign intent and provided legitimacy for the legal proceedings against the Jewish state and its democratically-elected leaders by the ICC and ICJ.

Pope Francis’ pronouncements could not have come at a worse time. The UN, the International Red Cross, the leading human rights NGOs, the elite universities, cultural figures, large swaths of the legacy media and social media influencers all contributed to an environment of skyrocketing antisemitic hate crimes, the targeting of synagogues on four continents, and the normalization of Jew-hatred in leading democracies—all against the backdrop of Israel’s seven-front existential war, supercharged by 24/7 attacks on social media.

This was a moment that cried out for moral clarity from Pope Francis to explicitly denounce Hamas’ genocidal terrorism and the murderous Iranian regime. Instead, the pope in words and actions provided succor to the enemies of peace.

It is not a turn that we saw coming. Pope Francis regularly denounced antisemitism at multiple audiences with the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish NGOs. He counted Jews in Argentina, including rabbis, among his friends. His visit to Israel in 2014 included the Western Wall and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

But since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish concerns about the pope began as unease, grew to frustration and evolved into a feeling of betrayal.

The day after Oct. 7, he declared that “terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions,” effectively equating Hamas’ brutal terrorism and the IDF’s anticipated response. This, before Israel had even entered Gaza to find a zip code completely weaponized above and below ground.

By Oct. 29, Francis called for a ceasefire, saying: “Stop, brothers and sisters: war is always a defeat—always, always!” Inexplicably, Pope Francis was calling for Israel to leave Hamas in power in Gaza, from where—as they explicitly bragged—given the chance, they would perpetrate such massacres again and again until Israel was eradicated.

From the beginning of the war, the pope never mentioned Hamas by name (except for once in November 2024 in a report that the Vatican has not confirmed). While always urging Israel to stop the war, he never once called on Hamas to surrender, which would have ended the war, freed innocent hostages and allowed the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives.

It got worse. On Oct. 25, 2024, Pope Francis denounced Israel’s long-delayed campaign to dislodge Hezbollah from their illegal (see U.N. resolution 1701) positions in Southern Lebanon, from where it decimated Israel’s northern communities for a year, killing, maiming and exiling 60,000-plus civilians. His words didn’t address the plight of Israelis. But Pope Francis did say: “May the international community make every effort to stop this terrible escalation. It is unacceptable. I express my solidarity with the Lebanese people.”

Apparently, not the Jewish people.

On Sept. 29, 2024, he labeled Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza illegal and immoral, hinting that the cause of it was that Jews believed in their superiority and pouring fuel on the raging antisemitic fires: “When there is something disproportionate, it is evident that there is a domineering tendency that goes beyond morality. A country that does these things with its forces—I am talking about any country—in such a ‘superlative’ way commits immoral actions,” Pope Francis declared

On Oct. 6, 2024, the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas orgy of mass murder, rape and hostage-taking, Pope Francis talked about a “spiral of revenge,” as if Israel pursued its battle not to protect its citizens from the carnage, but because it sought revenge.

A day later, he addressed his Oct. 7 letter not to Israelis but to Christians, urging them to pray more for peace. “Prayer and fasting are the weapons of love that change history, the weapons that defeat our one true enemy: the spirit of evil that foments war, because it is ‘murderous from the beginning’, ‘a liar and the father of lies’” (John 8:44). That verse has a centuries-long history of depicting Jews as the spawn of Satan himself. Its choice would have been devastating to Jewish-Catholic relations in the best of times. During a time of global Jew-hatred, it was incendiary.

By Nov. 17 of last year, the pope had publicly blessed the campaign to libel Israel’s defensive war as “genocide.”

He said, “according to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.”

Then on Dec. 7, Francis received a Nativity scene that placed the baby Jesus in a keffiyeh. While it was later removed, the pope gave life to the Palestinian rewrite of history in which the Holy Family was Palestinian, not Jewish (even though Palestinians did not exist then), while the Romans are replaced by Jews.

On the 21st of that month, he responded to the deaths of children in a targeted attack on Hamas operatives: “This is cruelty. This is not war.” He doubled down on this the next day with unfounded attacks on Israel. “I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals. … So much cruelty!” The machine-gunning, of course, was imaginary; the schools and hospitals had been commandeered by Hamas terrorists who were targeted by the IDF seeking to minimize, not maximize, the inevitable civilian casualties.

It pains me to criticize Pope Francis. I had the opportunity to meet him on four occasions. He opposed war and traveled to many hotspots around the world to lobby for mercy, peace, and reconciliation.  The pope was no antisemite. However, his ill-conceived, one-sided statements on Gaza and Lebanon profoundly hurt the Jewish people. “War is always a defeat,” Francis declared, but what alternative did he offer to a people under attack by murderous terrorists who weaponized their own civilians?

None.

During the coming weeks, the world will join with 1.4 billion Catholics in paying tribute to Pope Francis. We too will pay our respects to a pontiff who traversed the globe in pursuit of peace, even as we will mourn his failure to differentiate between good and evil in the Holy Land.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Global Advocate and former Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.