Vatican City – Pope Francis reached out on Thursday to Rome’s Jewish community, saying he hoped he would be able to contribute to furthering good relations between Catholics and Jews.
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The new pope sent a message to Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, inviting him to his inaugural Mass at the Vatican on March 19.
“I sincerely hope to be able to contribute to the progress that relations between Jews and Catholics have enjoyed since the Second Vatican Council,” he said, according to a statement on Vatican Radio.
Francis said he hoped to be able to contribute to “a spirit of renewed collaboration”.
Relations between Catholics and Jews improved greatly after the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, which issued a landmark statement repudiating the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus’s death and urged dialogue with all religions.
Both of Francis’s immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II, visited Rome’s main synagogue.
The Rome Jewish community is the oldest in the diaspora and plays a guiding role in Catholic-Jewish relations worldwide.
World Jewish organizations welcomed the election of Francis, who maintained good relations with the Argentine Jewish community when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.
“There is much in his record that reassures us about the future,” said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States.
In 2010, the future pope published a book on inter-faith dialogue together with Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka.
In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate of the Jewish state said Francis’s past “good relations with the Jewish people are well known” and was confident his pontificate would develop them further.
I guess we should wish him; gut yontif, pontif
So far, he is sending all the right signals regarding Jewish-Catholic relationships. He had a strong relationship with the Jewish community in Argentina and has always been regarded as a progressive. If you believe in hashgacha paratis, his election as Pope is a good omen.
I like the modesty of this Pope. He seems like a real down to earth person.
He looks like the guy in the back of my shul on Yom Kippur (white yarmulke and all)
Que le dijo el Argentino a la vaca?
Dale che
Dale che’
He was a guilt complex- his parents fled Germany to Argentina, when they came looking for war criminals. Not to say that he may be VERY different from his father, but only time will tell. They do say he’s very humble, and very willing to take responsibility for how the church conducts itself ( so says my Catholic co-worker).
We know that ever thing is from hashem. Rosh chodesh nisan is rosh hashana lmelachim. The pope become a pope at rosh chodesh nisan i think is a good sign from hashem
Only a Ben Eisav looks so Jewish.
His homely to the cardinals was those who walk without the cross, pray without the cross and built without cross are wordly and pray to devil. I don’t walk with the cross and I don’t pray to the cross matter of fact the cross accused me as a child of deicide and those with the cross helped to escape war criminals where of course to south america paraguay, and argentinia