Pope Francis Blasts Disruption of Kristallnacht Event by Catholic Extremists in Argentina
Pope Francis, reacting to the disruption of a recent interfaith Kristallnacht memorial, told Latin American religious leaders visiting the Vatican that “aggression cannot be an act of faith.”
“Preaching intolerance is a form of militancy that must be overcome,” Francis told the delegation on Tuesday.
The pope made his remarks a week after fundamentalist Christians disrupted a Jewish-Christian ceremony at a Buenos Aires cathedral marking the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom.
“Pope Francis has already had a number of meetings with leaders of other faiths, but he never fails to surprise us with his sensitivity and the deep interest he shows for his interlocutors,” said Claudio Epelman, the executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress.
Epelman, also the head of World Jewish Congress relations with the Vatican, was part of a six-person delegation from South America who was received for a private audience with the pontiff.
“With this meeting, the pope has once again shown his strong, personal commitment to building bridges between religions and to working together with all of us to secure peace,” Epelman said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
