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... the temptation of racial hatred, which is the origin of the worst forms of anti-Semitism. |
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In one of his first acts as pontiff, Pope Benedict sent a message to Rome's chief rabbi expressing his intent to advance dialogue with the Jewish community.
Later in 2005, marking the 40th anniversary of "Nostra Aetate," the Vatican II declaration on relations with non-Christians, the pope cited the shared spiritual roots of Catholics and Jews and called for a common witness on issues of life, human dignity, the family and peace.
The pope showed sensitivity to Jewish concerns the same year when he effectively suspended the beatification cause of Father Leon Dehon, founder of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus religious order, and formed a commission of church experts to study the priest's writings for alleged anti-Semitism.
On a sainthood cause with even greater potential impact, Pope Benedict late last year established a commission to study archival material about the papacy of Pope Pius XII and examine how his possible beatification would affect Catholic-Jewish relations.
The move was not an abandonment of the sainthood cause, but it signaled that the pope would be looking very carefully at its wider consequences, including interreligious and diplomatic aspects.
On his very first foreign trip in 2005, Pope Benedict visited a synagogue in Cologne, Germany, that had been destroyed in a 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom and rebuilt after the war. In a moving encounter, he recalled the Nazi persecution of the Jews as "the darkest period of German and European history."
A year later, however, when he visited Auschwitz in Poland, some Jewish leaders criticized the pope for not focusing enough on the Nazis' Jewish victims and for not explicitly condemning anti-Semitism.
The pope responded a few days later, telling a general audience in Rome that humanity must not give in to "the temptation of racial hatred, which is the origin of the worst forms of anti-Semitism."
One of the pope's most intriguing "encounters" with Judaism came in his 2007 book, "Jesus of Nazareth." The most quoted author in the pope's book was Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a U.S. professor of religion and theology.
Responding to Rabbi Neusner's own book, "A Rabbi Talks With Jesus," the pope praised him for taking the Gospel of Jesus seriously and for correctly grasping Jesus' own understanding of his mission as the Son of God -- even though, in the end, the rabbi could not accept Christ as savior.
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