Courtesy Minneapolis Institute of Arts Part of the Havdalah ritual, which bids adieu to the departing Sabbath, recognizes the divine separator between sacred and profane, light and darkness, Israel and the nations, and the seventh day and weekdays. The second to last distinction is deemphasized in a unique Jewish circa-1800 spice box currently on view…
Pope Paul VI, the first pontiff to visit Israel and the pope who opened the Roman Catholic Church to formal dialogue with the Jewish world, has moved a step closer to sainthood. Pope Francis beatified Paul at a Vatican ceremony Sunday at the close of a synod of bishops. Paul VI reigned from 1963-1978. He…
In a pre-Rosh Hashana meeting, Pope Francis and a World Jewish Congress delegation discussed the worrying international situation, including the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. Francis received the delegation, headed by WJC President Ronald Lauder, at his residence in the Vatican Wednesday night. The delegation also included WJC Secretary General Robert Singer; the…
John Paul II’s Letter to a Jewish Friend: The Heart-Rending Story of Two Polish Boys Divided by World War II, Reunited by Love by Gian Franco Svidercoschi The Crossroad Publishing Company, 108 pages, $13.13 In April, when Pope John Paul II became Saint John Paul the Great, admirers recalled the late pontiff’s affinity for the…
Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority have all hailed Pope Francis’s whirlwind pilgrimage as a success — and indeed, the very fact that it went as smoothly as it did was no small achievement for all involved. Pope Francis’s global superstar status guaranteed media focus on local voices and images wherever he went. For the…
Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement told the head of the Maronite church on Friday that his planned trip to Jerusalem to accompany Pope Francis would have “negative repercussions”. Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai has said he will join the pope on his May 24-26 tour of the Holy Land, drawing criticism in Lebanon which remains in a…
(JTA) — Popes John Paul II and John XXIII are being declared saints of the Roman Catholic church on April 27, which is also the eve of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a coincidence but a notable one. These two post-Holocaust pontiffs revolutionized relations between Catholics and Jews, fostering interfaith dialogue and embedding…
The late Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, who will be made saints on Sunday, did so much to end two millennia of Catholic anti-Semitism that a Jewish human rights group calls them “heroes to the Jewish people”. Both pontiffs marked the world’s largest church in such varied ways that most Roman Catholics would…
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