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….
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asked the Vatican to intercede in helping free American-Jewish contractor Alan Gross from a Cuban jail. Kerry said in a meeting Tuesday with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, they discussed Cuba and the need for respect for freedom of religion and human rights in the island…
“I am a Jew who loves the Pope.” So writes Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch) in a column for The Huffington Post’s Religion vertical. The Jewish man who immortalized Spartacus, is apparently a big fan of the new guy ruling over Rome (well, the Vatican). “I have always said, ‘don’t be too religious,’ he adds….
Pope Francis’s renewed commitment to fostering relations between Catholics and Jews and condemning anti-Semitism has drawn praise. In “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), a 224-page document outlining his vision of the church and its mission that was released this week, Francis praised the current state of Jewish-Catholic relations and expressed regret for past…
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s 71-year-old culture minister, paid his own tribute on Monday to the late rocker Lou Reed, tweeting one of his best-known songs before clarifying he was not condoning any reference to drugs some have seen in the song. Ravasi, an Italian who is the same age as Reed was when he…
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