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Adam Gregerman
Tablet, Nov. 19, 2024
“Francis, with rare exceptions, ignores or minimizes the nature of the threats faced by Israel. Despite the avowed goals of Israel’s enemies, he never acknowledges this as distinctly genocidal in intent.”
Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s operation in Gaza constitutes genocide, according to a new book published for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year. “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the pope said in excerpts published Sunday by the Italian daily La Stampa.
What makes the inflammatory statements in the pope’s book especially disturbing is that they follow on remarks by the pope that appear to demonize Jews even more broadly and which are contrary to teachings of the Church. Pope Francis’ prior Letter to Catholics of the Middle East on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza provoked widespread confusion and consternation among Jews and Catholics. While he has spoken regularly about the attack and the fighting that erupted in its wake, his inclusion in the letter of a citation of John 8:44 to denounce the evils of war was to many inexplicable.
The verse chosen by the pontiff, a vitriolic accusation that the Jews “are from [their] father, the devil,” has for centuries provoked and been used to justify Church hostility to Jews. Yet such terrible imagery of Jewish malfeasance is thoroughly out of place in a modern Catholic document. Regrettably, the pope nonetheless chose to use this notorious verse at a time when global antisemitism has reached disturbingly high levels. Such a statement threatens the intellectual work of his Catholic predecessors going back to the 1960s.
While the citation is surely troubling, more significant is the letter itself, for it is yet another example of an ongoing presentation of Francis’ extensive and controversial views on the Israel-Hamas war. This letter has made people aware of this significant body of statements and demonstrates the compelling need to understand current relations with one of the Jewish community’s most influential and important partners, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. In the year after the attack, Francis has spoken publicly about the war at least 75 different times. The conflict is not just like other conflicts, for it occurs in a place “which has witnessed the history of revelation” (2/2/24).. … [To read the full article, click here]
