These two popes' personal narratives are inseparable from the Holocaust, and their reactions to the systematic genocide of the Jews played a critical role in the revolution in Catholic-Jewish relations during the last half century.

The annihilation of 6 million Jews — one-third of world Jewry — and Eastern Europe's towering Jewish civilization was an unparalleled tragedy enabled by nearly 2,000 years of Christian demonization of Jews and Judaism.

Too often, too many stood by as Jews were slaughtered like animals during World War II.

Like many Jews of my generation, it is both a national and personal horror.

My father's aunt and first cousins were murdered by the Nazis in the forest outside Bialystok, their hometown in Poland.

But if telling the Holocaust story ends there, it has not been fully told.

We also have a responsibility to tell the story of the many who risked their lives to save Jews.

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, has identified more than 25,000 non-Jews who are called "Righteous Among the Nations."

Additionally, we should recognize the collective self-reflection of the churches in admitting Christian complicity and demonstrating a commitment to creating a world where the lessons of the Holocaust have been learned. Continue reading.

Rabbi Noam E. Marans is director of interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: Your Observer

The dialogue between Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka has just been published in English by Image Books, with the title On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the 21st Century.

"When a priest leads a diocese or a parish, he has to listen to his community, to make mature decisions and lead the community accordingly," the future Pope said.

"In contrast, when the priest imposes himself, when in some way he says, ‘I am the boss here', he falls into clericalism."

On worldly priests, he said: "One Catholic theologian, Henri de Lubac, says that the worst that can happen to those that are anointed and called to service is that they live with the criteria of the world instead of the criteria that the Lord commands from the tablets of the law and the Gospel. The worst that can happen in the priestly life is to be worldly, to be a ‘light' bishop or a ‘light' priest."

Other comments from the future Pope Francis include:

On the Devil: "Maybe his [the Devil's] greatest achievement in these times has been to make us believe that he does not exist, and that all can be fixed on a purely human level…. Man's life on Earth is warfare; Job says it, meaning that people are constantly put to the test; that is to say, a test to overcome a situation and overcome oneself."

On opening the Vatican's World War II-era archives relating to Pope Pius XII: "They should open them and clarify everything. Then it can be seen if they could have done something, to what extent it could have been done, and if we were wrong in something we will be able to say: ‘We were wrong in this.' We do not have to be afraid of that. The objective has to be the truth."

Sources:

Zenit

National Catholic Reporter

Image Books

Image: TPM Livewire