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…
The Vatican has withdrawn thousands of official papal medals from sale after discovering they had misspelled Jesus’ name. A Latin inscription around the edge of the medals to mark the first year of Pope Francis’ pontificate referred to “Lesus”. The medals, produced in gold, silver and bronze by the Italian State Mint, went on sale…
An Op-Ed in the Vatican newspaper blasted “unrestrained anti-Semitism” at a music festival in Belgium where British rocker Roger Waters displayed an inflatable wild boar balloon with a Star of David and other symbols on it. “The spirit and the style of the Werchter Rock festival was visible, with the fans who had every right…
The Vatican has recently announced that two popes who were pioneers in Christian-Jewish relations — John XXIII and John Paul II — are leading candidates for canonization as saints in the Roman Catholic Church. John Paul II was, of course, the pope who followed in the steps of John XXIII in his forthright condemnation of…
● From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 By John Connelly Harvard University Press, 384 pages, $35 My definition of Catholic-Jewish relations: an unnatural act engaged in by partially consenting adults — following an opening prayer. This one-liner tells us much that we need to know about the relationships…
100% of profits support our journalism
