Why Pope Francis of Blessed Memory Was So Important to the Jews

I know that many of those writing about the late Pope Francis and the Jews have been dealing with his disappointing lack of support for Israel in the aftermath of October 7^th. I believe that they have seriously misjudged the positive importance of his papacy.

Permit me to state my case briefly.

There are multiple forms of antisemitism and clearly one of the most important and most enduring has been religious antisemitism. We should recall antisemitism differs in its  source and in its goal, in its priority and in the stability of society.

Over the past sixty years Roman Catholicism has made a significant effort to address the theological sources of antisemitism within Catholicism. Quietly, yet clearly and directly, Pope Francis built on the legacy of his predecessors Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II to diminish, if not to end, the theological antisemitism of Roman Catholicism toward Judaism and toward Jews.

Recall:

Pope John XXIII, initiated Vatican II, which significantly reversed two millennia of Roman Catholic teaching on the Jews. Nostra Atatae reinterpreted Christian Scripture to broaden responsibility for the crucifixion. It changed Scriptural readings and modified the liturgy for Good Friday so that Jews are neither portrayed as Christ-killers, nor as accepting the responsibility for his death on themselves and their children. Nostra Atatae recognized the religious legitimacy of continuing Jewish life and thus reversed major anti-Judaic components of Christian teaching. After Nostra Atatae, the Church held the sins of all humanity responsible for the death of Jesus and the Jews were not portrayed as cursed by God for the murder of Jesus.” Perhaps, most importantly, it addressed Jews as Jews respectfully as the sons of Abraham, bearers of a covenantal tradition. He thus made peace with 1878 of Jewish history after the birth of Jesus, falling short of recognizing Israel and the implications of post 1948 Jewish life.

His successor once removed, Pope John Paul II did just that.

As Pope he recognized the State of Israel. He visited a synagogue for prayer –the first Bishop of Rome to visit a synagogue — and treated the Rabbi and the Congregation of Rome with every religious courtesy. Instead of dividing the world between Christians and Jews, he spoke of the commonality of the religious traditions, he spoke with reverence of the Torah. He spoke out against antisemitism again and again. He visited the sites of Jewish death and acknowledged on numerous occasions the centrality of the Shoah.

In March 2000, Pope John Paul II visited Israel. From the moment he arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv to the moment he departed, it was clear to Roman Catholics and Jews, and to the international media, that this was an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation in the shadow not only of two millennia of Christian antisemitism but in the massive shadow of the Holocaust. Even if Pope John Paul II did not say everything that could be said, his bowed head at Yad Vashem and his note of apology inserted into the Western Wall said more than could be said by words alone. In the Third Millennia, The Pontiff was determined that Roman Catholics act differently, behave differently and believe differently. An eyewitness to the Holocaust, he had come to make amends. He took all-important steps to make certain that the full authority of the papacy was brought to bear against antisemitism. His theology was quite simple: antisemitism is a sin against God. It is anti-Christian. These are welcome words to every Jew and one could sense their power by the manner in which the Israelis received Pope John Paul II. Even ultra-Orthodox Rabbis, opposed by conviction to anything ecumenical and raised on the stories transmitted through the generations of confrontations between Priests and Rabbis, were deeply impressed by the Papal visit to the offices of the Israel’s Chief Rabbis.

Still even he, did not end the Mission to the Jews.

Pope Francis did.

Thus, Pope Francis recognized the religious legitimacy of Jews remaining Jews and fulfilling their Covenant with God. Roman Catholic need not convert Jews, Jews do not require Baptism to be right with God and thus no effort should be made by the Church to covert them.

For centuries, there was a dark side to the Christian relationship with the Jews. Supercessionist traditions maintained that Christianity had come to take the place of Judaism, the New Testament to fulfill the Old. There was a theological difficulty for believing Christians to find a religious reason why Jews should continue to be Jews, except as a sign of obstinacy of a stiff-necked people.  St. Agustine viewed the Jews as a Witness People. Who better to accept Jesus as the Christ when he returns, then those who denied him in the first place, Augstine said.

And if there was no reason why Jews should continue to exist as Jews, there was even more motivation to convert them, and in difficult moments to sanction their elimination by expulsion or to turn aside during pogroms. In his discussions with the Vatican prior to Nostra Atatae, the late Abraham Joshua Heschel said: ” Speech has power and few men realize that words do not fade… What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.”

Much of this tradition was ended  — at least in theory — for Roman Catholics by Vatican II, and with the changes in catechism, less of this tradition was transmitted in Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic schools, at least in the United States.

And now the last of the major steps were taken under the leadership and at the initiative of Pope Francis.

The result has been a substantial decrease in Roman Catholic antisemitism and a new era of ecumenical respect.

I think that this step, if not undone by future Pope and it will be exceedingly difficult to undue, is of historic experience and will be recalled long after the war in Gaza is but a distant memory. And anyone who does not recognize its historical significance does not quite understand the sources and manifestations of religious antisemitism.

So I mourn this Pope. I admired his modesty, humility, piety and pastoral sensitivity and respect his sense of justice and compassion. And as a religious Jew, I am grateful that he has come to recognize on behalf the Church he led, what I have always known, that Judaism is a legitimate and honored path to be faithful to God and humanity.

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and a professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University.