Pope Francis described the Jewish people as the “big brothers” of his Roman Catholic flock on Sunday in words of solidarity marking the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews and their property in Nazi Germany. Francis said the state-sponsored ransacking of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, on the night of Nov. 9, 1938,…
Pope Francis has continued to reach out to Jews, this time with a personal email to Menachem Z. Rosensaft, an American law professor who deals with Holocaust and genocide issues. Francis’s email was a reflection on the place of God during the Holocaust. It was, Elizabeth Tenety wrote in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog,…
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet in Rome with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss talks with the Palestinians and Iran. Kerry will meet Oct. 23 with Netanyahu to “discuss ongoing final status negotiations with the Palestinians, along with Iran, Syria, and other issues of mutual concern,” a State Department release said…
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday invited Pope Francis to visit the Holy Land, matching a standing invitation from Israel. The pontiff, who has made many appeals for peace in the Middle East since his election in March, has already accepted an invitation from Israeli president Shimon Peres, and is widely expected to make the…
Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, who played key roles in fostering Catholic-Jewish relations, will be canonized as saints. The ceremony will take place next April 27, the Vatican announced Monday. Polish-born John Paul, who reigned from 1978 to 2005, made bettering Catholic-Jewish relations a cornerstone of his papacy. John XXIII, who reigned…
WASHINGTON — A GOP official in Virginia refused to apologize for an anti-Semitic joke, although the party’s candidate for governor called it inappropriate. “I did not tell an anti-Semitic joke,” John Whitbeck, the Republican Party’s chairman in its 10th Congressional District, in northern Virginia, told the Free Beacon on Wednesday. “I told a joke I…
Pope Francis praised Jews for keeping their faith despite the Holocaust and other “terrible trials” throughout history, and reaffirmed Judaism as the “holy root” of Christianity. Francis made the statements in an unprecedented open letter to Eugenio Scalfari, a prominent Italian atheist and founding editor of the liberal newspaper La Repubblica. The pope’s letter, published…
Pope Francis, in some of the most compassionate words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged or marginalised and should be integrated into society, but he reaffirmed Church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin. In a broad-ranging 80-minute conversation with journalists on the plane bringing him back from a week-long…
אינעם שמועס באַטייליקן זיך יניבֿ גאָלדבערג, מיכל יאַשינסקי און חיים וואָלף.
