By RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER, RABBI YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN
JNS
Pope Francis’s sudden abandonment of the Jews could not have come at a worse time. The past 15 months have been marked by skyrocketing anti-Semitic hate crimes, the targeting of synagogues on four continents, the demonization of Israel by the large swaths of the international community and elite universities, and the normalization of Jew-hatred in leading democracies—all against the backdrop of Israel’s seven-front existential war, the hate fed by 24/7 attacks on social media. Each element contributes to how widespread and pervasive history’s oldest hate has become.
Unhelpful Words
This was a moment that cried out for moral clarity from Pope Francis to explicitly denounce Hamas’s genocidal terrorism and the murderous Iranian regime. Instead, the pope in words and actions has demonized Israelis and provided succor to the enemies of peace.
It is not a turn that we saw coming. Pope Francis regularly denounced anti-Semitism at multiple audiences with the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish NGOs. He has Jewish friends in Argentina. His visit to Israel in 2014 included the Western Wall and Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
Betrayed?
But since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish concerns about the pope grew to frustration and evolved into a feeling of betrayal.
The day after Oct. 7, he declared that “terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions,” as if Hamas’s terrorism and the IDF’s anticipated response could be equated. This, before Israel had even entered Gaza to find a completely weaponized Gaza, above and below ground. The civilian infrastructure was included in the massive terrorist enclave.
By Oct. 29, Francis called for a ceasefire, saying: “Stop, brothers and sisters: war is always a defeat—always, always!” In effect, he was calling for Israel to leave Hamas in power in Gaza, from where, as they explicitly bragged, given the chance they would prepare for the next massacre.
From the beginning of the war, the pope never mentioned Hamas by name a single time (except for once in November 2024 in a report that the Vatican has not confirmed). While always urging Israel to stop, he never once called on Hamas to surrender, which would have ended the war, freed innocent hostages and allowed the people of Gaza to begin reconstruction.
It got worse. On Oct. 25, 2024, Pope Francis denounced Israel’s long-delayed campaign to dislodge Hezbollah from their illegal (see U.N. resolution 1701) positions in Southern Lebanon, from where it decimated Israel’s northern communities for a year, killing, maiming and exiling 60,000-plus civilians. His words didn’t address the plight of Israelis. But Pope Francis did say: “May the international community make every effort to stop this terrible escalation. It is unacceptable. I express my solidarity with the Lebanese people.”
Apparently, not the Jewish people.
Immoral Actions?
On Sept. 29, 2024, he labeled Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza illegal and immoral, hinting that the cause of it was that Jews believed in their superiority. “When there is something disproportionate, it is evident that there is a domineering tendency that goes beyond morality. A country that does these things with its forces—I am talking about any country—in such a ‘superlative’ way commits immoral actions.” Even as Jews were targeted again and again by raging anti-Semitism, the pope dumped more fuel on those out-of-control fires.
Incendiary Comments
On Oct. 6, 2024, the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas orgy of mass murder, rape and hostage-taking, Pope Francis talked about a “spiral of revenge,” as if Israel pursued its battle not to protect its citizens from the carnage, but because it sought revenge, which it found in large numbers of Palestinian deaths. It is Jews acting on the biblical eye for an eye but demanding 10 for one instead.
A day later, he addressed his Oct. 7 letter not to Israelis but to Christians, urging them to pray more for peace. “Prayer and fasting are the weapons of love that change history, the weapons that defeat our one true enemy: the spirit of evil that foments war, because it is ‘murderous from the beginning’, ‘a liar and the father of lies’ ” (John 8:44). That verse has a centuries-long history of depicting Jews as the spawn of Satan himself. Its choice would have been devastating to Jewish-Catholic relations in the best of times. During a time of global Jew-hatred, it was incendiary.
By Nov. 17 of last year, the pope had publicly blessed the campaign to libel Israel’s defensive war as “genocide.”
He said, “according to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.”
Even if his words included “needs investigation,” the damage was done. Abetting the global campaign to demonize the Jewish state, the pontiff endangered the lives of Jews but got Palestinian residents of Gaza no closer to “the day after.”
Then on Dec. 7, Francis received a Nativity scene that placed the baby Jesus in a keffiyeh. While it was later removed, the pope gave life to the Palestinian rewrite of history in which the Holy Family was Palestinian, not Jewish (even though Palestinians did not exist then), while the Romans are replaced by Jews.
On the 21st of that month, he responded to the deaths of children in a targeted attack on Hamas operatives. “This is cruelty. This is not war.” He doubled down on this the next day with horrific, unfounded attacks on Israel. “I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals. … So much cruelty!” The machine-gunning, of course, was imaginary; the schools and hospitals had been commandeered by Hamas terrorists, who were targeted by the IDF to minimize, not maximize, civilian casualties.
The pope is no antisemite. However, his ill-conceived, one-sided statements on Gaza and Lebanon have profoundly hurt the Jewish people. Jews wonder whether they somehow now, in their time of greatest peril, mean less to the pope than the lives of others.
“War is always a defeat,” declares Francis, but what alternative does he offer to people under attack by murderous terrorists who weaponize their own civilians?
While the sainted Pope John Paul II stood at the Western Wall—the Kotel—and called Jews the “elder brother” of the church, the present occupant of St. Peter’s throne has reverted to an older anti-Semitic position of the church.
Perhaps in the remaining time he sits on that throne, Pope Francis will undo some of this serious damage. But for now, Jews will remember him as part of the problem of anti-Semitism, not its solution.
