The Vatican has joined 30 other states in contributing funding to help preserve the site of the former Auschwitz death camp. An announcement Monday on the website of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum said the Vatican will contribute $135,000 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which aims to raise $162 million to preserve the authentic remains of the…
Ancestral Torpor: Jews and Christians in the Sistine Chapel By Giovanni Careri Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 325 pages, $36 The American Jewish writer Irving Stone (born Tannenbaum) aptly titled his 1961 novel about Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” For centuries, ecstatic tourists have admired the…
Pope Francis has strongly defended his wartime predecessor Pius XII against accusations he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, saying the opening of Vatican archives will shed light on the controversy. In an interview published on Friday in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Francis condemned anti-Semitism, saying it was a “continuing” problem that was…
Israeli President Shimon Peres arrived in Rome to take part in a “call for peace,” with Pope Francis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Peres arrived in Rome Sunday morning for the Vatican visit. During the main event with the three leaders as well as delegations of Jewish, Christian and Islamic faith leaders, they will…
Three popes have visited Israel. But Pope Francis will be the first to visit the “State of Palestine.” The official itinerary for his Holy Land trip during the last week in May has him visiting an entity that, as far as both Israel and the United States are concerned, doesn’t exist. In fact, the very…
Jean-Marie Lustiger (Laurent Lucas) in “The Jewish Cardinal” // Film Movement “If you don’t battle your characters, it’s very boring,” said French filmmaker Ilan Duran Cohen. For his latest movie, “The Jewish Cardinal,” he chose as his subject Jean-Marie Lustiger, one of the most divisive figures of Jewish — or should we say Christian? —…
Should Pope Francis decide to open the secret Vatican archives regarding the World War II pontificate of Pope Pius XII, it could still take another year and a half before the thousands of documents in question are fully catalogued. “It is a very complex operation, which we have been working on for six years,” Monsignor…
Pope Francis treated a Jewish delegation from his native Argentina to a private lunch catered by one of Rome’s top kosher restaurants. On Thursday, proprietors of the restaurant Ba’ Ghetto brought Roman Jewish specialties to the Vatican, where the pope hosted the group of rabbis and Jewish leaders at the Santa Marta guesthouse, his residence….
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