“The past must serve as a lesson for us in the present and into the future”, he said, recalling the tragedy of the Shoah, or Holocaust.
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Francis’s visit, the third by a pope following those of John Paul II in 1986 and Benedict XVI in 2010, comes as an important gesture of inter-religious friendship and trust at a time when faith-inspired terrorism and violence makes itself felt around the world. The 2,000-strong Jewish congregation rose and applauded the visitor. “From enemies and strangers, we’ve become friends and brothers”.
The pontiff delivered a message of peace, evoking “the unbreakable bond betweens Jews and Christians”.
Pope Francis on Sunday visited the Great Synagogue of Rome located just across the River Tiber from the Vatican.
The Pope’s Sunday visit also included an acknowledgment of Holocaust survivors and Francis’s repetition of John Paul’s assertion that Jews are Christians’ “elder brothers” in the family of God. His visit came in the wake of the publication last month of a new Catholic Church document, The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable, which outlined the developments of the last 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Jews.
In the new document, the Vatican went farther than “Nostra Aetate” or any subsequent Vatican statement making clear that Jews are in a salvific relationship with God and that the Catholic Church “neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews”. He added that “the theological dimension of Jewish-Catholic dialogue merits a greater profundity, and I wish to encourage all those involved in this dialogue to continue in this direction”.
The visit also occurs following a year when the Vatican took steps that have rankled Jewish leaders in Israel.
In introductory remarks, Ruth Dureghello, president of Rome’s Jewish community said such violence needs to be condemned.
Francis spoke at the synagogue in an effort to demonstrate interfaith solidarity in the wake of recent religiously motivated violence around the world, and to condemn anti-Semitism.
“Conflicts, wars, violence and injustice open profound wounds in humanity and call us to reinforce our commitment to peace and justice”, the pope said.
“He has a great line in there where he says, ‘God’s identity card is mercy.’ You know, if you ask, ‘Who is God?’ He says, “There’s the answer right on the identity card, God is mercy'”. “God is the God of life and always wants to promote and defend it; and we, created in his image and likeness, are obliged to do the same”.
“Six million people, simply because they belonged to the Hebrew people, were victims of the most inhuman barbarity, perpetrated in the name of an ideology that wanted to put man in God’s place”, Francis said.
And he urged them not to allow difficulties “to deprive them of this hope and of the joy of life that derive from experiencing divine mercy, thanks also to those who welcome you and help you”.
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Pope Francis remembered in a particular way the thousands of Roman Jews who were deported to Auschwitz in October, 1943, saying, “their sufferings, their anguish, their tears, must never be forgotten”.
