On Monday, April 20, 2015, Pope Francis met with a delegation from the Conference of European Rabbis at the Vatican. No pope has ever met with the conference before.
“Anti-Semitic trends in Europe,” the pope said at the historic meeting, are a cause for worry as are accompanying “acts of hatred and violence.”
All Christians, said the pope, “must be firm in deploring all forms of anti-Semitism, and in showing their solidarity with the Jewish people… Acts of hatred and violence against Christians and the faithful of other religions must likewise be condemned everywhere,” he added.
The pope also proposed that Jews and Christians have a co-responsibility to keep faith in God alive in the face of rampant secularism. Both Jews and Christians, he said, have “the blessing but also the responsibility to help preserve the religious sense of the men and women of today, and that of our society.”
Francis noted that for almost fifty years, “the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community has progressed in a systematic way.”
Jews are Sabbath-keepers and were one of the groups that were persecuted in the Middle Ages. Finding ecumenical solidarity and religious common ground is Rome’s way of uniting the world under her influence.
“The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists today.” The Great Controversy, page 571
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