JNS
“Considering the pressures on the church from both within and without, dramatic changes are rare,” David Michaels, of B’nai B’rith, told JNS.
American Jewish leaders, who attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass in Rome on Sunday and met with the pontiff at the Vatican the following day, are optimistic about the future of Jewish-Catholic relations. But they told JNS that they remain clear-eyed about what they think is likely to be a continuation of the Church’s approach of holding Israel uniquely responsible for the war that Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023.
“There is a feeling that there is a desire for a renewed moment, but let’s be clear. It is unlikely that we’re going to see a big change in policy at the Vatican in how they evaluate the Israel-Hamas war at this moment,” Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, told JNS.
Marans, who recently met the pope, told JNS that he thinks that Leo XIV will follow in Francis’s footsteps regarding the late pontiff’s criticism of the Jewish state.
“He probably will choose more diplomatic language that can be more easily heard and will avoid being extemporaneous on the most neuralgic of issues that can yield to unintended affront,” Marans said of the new pope.
“I’m expecting more change in style than in substance,” he said.
Following his meeting with the pope, David Michaels, director of United Nations and intercommunal affairs at B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that he also doesn’t expect major shifts from Vatican City.
“Considering the pressures on the church from both within and without, dramatic changes are rare,” he told JNS. “This said, I think it is fair for us as partners of the Catholic Church, who place immense value on the largely dramatic progress in our ties since the Holocaust, to expect the church to take care to demonstrate ongoing commitment to combating antisemitism, including in its most lethal and prevalent contemporary forms.”
‘Confidence in the relationship’
The existential threats and violence that Israel and Jews face “are underpinned by sentiments of religious ideology and intolerance, and it’s past time both religious and secular powers recognized this element forthrightly,” Michaels told JNS.
“Anti-Israel extremism impacts non-Jewish Israelis too, and intolerance that prominently targets Israel nonetheless doesn’t end with Israel,” he said.
Jewish-Catholic relations must be strengthened in Africa and Asia, where Catholicism is expanding but interaction between Christians and Jews remains limited, according to Michaels.
“The Vatican has afforded the Jewish community, including my organization, real respect and access over multiple decades now,” he told JNS. “What is most needed moving forward is to ensure no regression on respect for Jews both as a faith group and a people—manifest in Jewish statehood and the pursuit of security for Israel—among new generations and in regions less characterized by longtime Christian-Jewish interaction.”
American Jews want, broadly, to advance “bedrock values and tackle the universal challenges that we share” with Catholics, according to Michaels.
“We should jointly combat antisemitism in all its forms, but also persecution of Christians and the erosion of religious freedom in various parts of the world,” he said. “We both fundamentally want to help the needy, promote dignity and increase tolerance and peace. We shouldn’t allow extremists in any community to hijack religion or interreligious relationships.”
And “most immediately, we do hope the Vatican will affirm the inherent legitimacy of Israel, of Israelis’ right to safety and the need for nearly 60 remaining Israeli hostages to be freed from unimaginable captivity in Gaza immediately,” he said.
Marans, who presented Pope Leo XIV with a Chicago White Sox cap and a Catholic edition of the AJC’s Translate Hate glossary, told JNS the new pope’s speech during Monday’s meeting with Jewish faith leaders addressed tension head-on. (Marans told JNS that the pope, a Chicago native who tends to be more stoic, smiled upon receiving the baseball cap.)
“He publicly acknowledged that there was some kind of challenge or crisis or difficulty that needed to be overcome,” he said. “It wasn’t one of these pollyannaish, platitudinous speeches. He got right down to the issue of needing to work on fixing the misunderstandings that have come between us.”
It was an unusual choice for a pope to admit in a first meeting with Jewish leaders that there are fences that need to be mended between the two communities, according to Marans.
“It shows confidence in the relationship, a willingness to address it and not to wait and acknowledges that there have been challenges in recent times, and that we need to work together to address them and put the relationship on a better path,” he said.
Marans told JNS that the early invitation for Jewish leaders to meet with the pope, and their front-row seats at Sunday’s inaugural Mass, suggest that the Church has renewed its commitment to Nostra Aetate, the landmark 1965 declaration that denounced Christian Jew-hatred and transformed the Church’s relationship with Jews.
“It was a very clear statement that Catholic-Jewish relations are at the center of the Catholic Church, measured by our place of honor where we were sat in the front row, right behind the altar, adjacent to the diplomatic corps, across from the cardinals, steps from the entrance to St Peter’s—all indicating that they want the relationship to flourish,” Marans said.
“They wanted Jewish leadership to be seen,” he added.
