Jewish reaction to the naming of Cardinal
Bergoglio as the new pope has been positive.
JewishJournal.com reports that he is remembered fondly for his compassionate response to Jews in Argentina:
JewishJournal.com reports that he is remembered fondly for his compassionate response to Jews in Argentina:
As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio
attended Rosh Hashanah services at the Benei Tikva Slijot synagogue in
September 2007.
Rabbi David Rosen, the director of
interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, told JTA that the new
pope is a "warm and sweet and modest man" known in Buenos Aires for
doing his own cooking and personally answering his phone.
After the bombing of the AMIA Jewish
community center in 1994, he "showed solidarity with the Jewish
community," Rosen said.
In 2005, Bergoglio was the first public
personality to sign a petition for justice in the AMIA bombing case. He also
was one of the signatories on a document called "85 victims, 85
signatures" as part of the bombing's 11th anniversary. In June 2010, he
visited the rebuilt AMIA building to talk with Jewish leaders.
"Those who said Benedict was the last
pope who would be a pope that lived through the Shoah, or that said there would
not be another pope who had a personal connection to the Jewish people, they
were wrong," Rosen said…
Israel Singer, the former head of the World
Jewish Congress, said he spent time working with Bergoglio when the two were
distributing aid to the poor in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s, part of a
joint Jewish-Catholic program called Tzedaka.
“We went out to the barrios where Jews and
Catholics were suffering togeher,” Singer told JTA. “If everyone sat in chairs
with handles, he would sit in the one without. He was always looking to be more
modest. He's going to find it hard to wear all these uniforms.”
Bergoglio also wrote the foreward of a book
by Rabbi Sergio Bergman and referred to him as “one of my teachers.”
Last November, Bergoglio hosted a
Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral with
Rabbi Alejandro Avruj from the NCI-Emanuel World Masorti congregation.
He also has worked with the Latin American
Jewish Congress and held meetings with Jewish youth who participate in its New
Generations program.
“The Latin American Jewish Congress has had
a close relationship with Jorge Bergoglio for several years," Claudio
Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, told JTA.
"We know his values and strengths. We have no doubt he will do a great job
leading the Catholic Church."
In his visit to the Buenos Aires synagogue,
according to the Catholic Zenit news agency, Bergoglio told the congregation
that he was there to examine his heart "like a pilgrim, together with you,
my elder brothers."
"Today, here in this synagogue, we are
made newly aware of the fact that we are a people on a journey and we place
ourselves in God’s presence," Zenit quoted the then-archbishop as saying.
"We must look at him and let him look at us, to examine our heart in his
presence and to ask ourselves if we are walking blamelessly."
Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union
of Italian Jewish Communities, offered Italian Jewry's congratualations to the
new pope with the “most fervent wishes” that his pontificate could bring “peace
and brotherhood to all humanity.”
In particular, Gattegna voiced the hope
that there would be a continuation “with reciprocal satisfaction” of “the
intense course of dialogue that the Jews have always hoped for and that has
been also realized through the work of the popes who have led the church in the
recent past."
In a separate article, JewishJournal.com
reports that international Jewish leaders are also hopeful that the new pope
will prove to be a friend of Jews around the world as we was a friend of Jews
in Argentina:
“In
the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, the widely shared impression is that he’s
very friendly, that the cardinal was determined to have a cordial relationship
with the Jewish community,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, said…
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S.
Lauder, who met Bergoglio in 2008, expressed optimism that Francis would
continue the work of building relationships between the Catholic Church and
world Jewry.
“He always had an open ear for our
concerns,” Lauder said in a statement. “I am sure that Francis I will continue
to be a man of dialogue, a man who is able to build bridges with other faiths.”
Bergoglio’s reputation in Argentina is not
that of a reformer. He is known to be socially conservative, upholding the
church’s traditionally held positions on gay rights and abortion. He has not
said much publicly about Israel in the past, but Hier said he is hopeful that
Francis will emerge as a supporter of the Jewish state.
“We
very much see him as a pope in the tradition of John Paul II and John XXIII,”
Hier said. John Paul II established formal relations between the Vatican and
Israel; John XXIII is believed to have influenced the drafting of “Nostra
Aetate,” the 1965 declaration that stated Jews could not be held responsible
for the death of Jesus.
UPDATE:
Religious News Service filed a report highlighting the significance of the pontiff's age and memory of the Holocaust:
UPDATE:
Religious News Service filed a report highlighting the significance of the pontiff's age and memory of the Holocaust:
“We welcome Pope Francis I to his new role as leader of the Catholic Church,” B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said in a statement. “Catholic-Jewish relations had remained a focus of Pope Benedict XVI and we look forward to continuing the solid foundation that already exists for interfaith dialogue.”
Other Jewish leaders and scholars noted that Francis’ relatively advanced age — 76 — is important to the Jewish community, in that the Holocaust happened during his lifetime and can conjure memories for him of the horrors to which anti-Semitism can lead.
No comments:
Post a Comment