He’s not our spiritual leader, of course, but the brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation could serve as a humble lesson for the Jewish community, as well. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to…
When the outspoken Polish priest Wojciech Lemanski returned with his parishioners to his church near Warsaw after holding a prayer vigil at the Treblinka Nazi death camp in early July, a dismissal notice awaited him. The Warsaw diocese of the Roman Catholic Church sacked Lemanski as parish priest in the small village of Jasienica for…
An Israeli is under arrest for the vandalism of a Christian monastery in the occupied West Bank last year, carried out in solidarity with hardline Jewish settlers, police said on Monday. Graffiti left on the 19th-century Latrun Monastery referred to Migron, an unauthorised settler outpost evacuated by the Israeli government. The words “Jesus is a…
● 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…
A Jewish leader expressed concern to Pope Francis on Monday over attempts to make a saint of World War Two-era Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. Francis made no mention of his wartime predecessor during his talks with members of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious…
Pope Francis greeted about 30 Jews and Catholics from Italy and the Americas who took part a symposium on Christian-Jewish dialogue. Among the Jewish participants was the pope’s old friend from Buenos Aires, Rabbi Abraham Skorka. The four-day seminar, which concluded Thursday, was organized by the Focolare Movement, an international Christian organization promoting brotherhood, and…
Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis said on Wednesday in his latest urging that people of all religions – or no religion – work together. The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics made his comments in the homily of his morning Mass in his residence, a…
If you don’t follow Philologos, the Forward’s inimitable language columnist, you’re missing one of the outstanding intellectual joys in contemporary Jewish life. I don’t say that idly. Week after week for 20-plus years, with an astonishing combination of erudition, curiosity and wit, he’s used readers’ inquiries into the origins of words and phrases to explore…
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