Recently I declared that a mounting crisis in Jewish-Catholic relations was the most under-covered Vatican story of 2024. Early indications are that a similar claim won’t be likely in 2025, since manifestations of the crisis will be simply too ubiquitous and obvious.
Over the last ten days, we’ve had a robust total of six separate illustrations of the point.
On Christmas eve – I repeat, on Christmas eve, when Catholic clergy generally already have their hands full – Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar summoned the ambassador of the Holy See, Filipino Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana, to discuss recent comments by Pope Francis on Gaza.
On 21 December, during his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Francis added an impromptu line referring to the deaths of children in air raids as “cruelty…not war”. It was taken by many Israelis and Jewish leaders to imply that the IDF is deliberately targeting children.
According to media reports, Sa’ar did not “reprimand” the Pope to Yllana, but he expressed “strong displeasure”.
The summons came after the foreign ministry had already issued a statement, which reached its crescendo by saying, “Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people.”
On the same day, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Anti-Semitism, Amichai Chikli, used an address to the Knesset marking Jewish Diaspora Week to accuse the Vatican of spreading “modern blood libels” against Israel.
His reference was to the Medieval “blood libel”, in which Christians falsely accused Jews of murdering Christian infants and using their blood in religious rituals.
“It is deeply disheartening to see the Pope – leader of an institution that was silent during the Holocaust – now promoting modern blood libels against the Jewish state,” Chikli said.
Any suggestion that Israeli soldiers target Palestinian children, Chikli said, are “lies with no foundation in reality”.
Continue reading at the Catholic Herald