Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz of the Inter-Religious Council of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has written to Pope Leo XIV to complain about rhetoric he has used to describe Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas.
Last month, the Pope accused Israel of an “attack” on a Catholic church in Gaza, implying that it was hit on purpose, after the Israeli military concluded that the church had been accidentally hit by a misfired munition.
Last week, at a large gathering for the Jubilee of Youth in Rome, the Pope concluded: “We are closer than ever to young people who suffer the most serious evils, which are caused by other human beings. We are with the young people of Gaza. We are with the young people of Ukraine, with those of every land bloodied by war.” He did not mention the young people of Israel, attacked by Hamas terrorists from Gaza — nor did he mention the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, whose captivity is the reason for the ongoing war.
In his letter, Rabbi Weisz expressed his objections to the Pope’s rhetoric, on behalf of Jews worldwide:
“The instinct to show compassion for those in pain is admirable and deeply human. However, by naming Gaza and Ukraine in the same breath —without drawing a moral distinction, and without any reference to the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas — many in the Jewish world heard a painful equivalence that deeply wounded us,” Weisz wrote on Wednesday, according to the letter shared with The Times of Israel by a rabbinate spokesperson.
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The rabbi also cautioned Leo that, on the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate — the landmark declaration rejecting the notion of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus’s death and calling for dialogue with non-Christian faiths — the hard-won reconciliation now faces the risk of being eroded.
“It is in the spirit of that covenant that I raise this concern,” Weisz wrote. “At a time when antisemitism is spreading once more — on the streets of Western capitals, in universities, and tragically even within some churches — moral clarity is more essential than ever. The absence of empathy for Israeli victims, particularly those still in captivity, sends a painful message and risks undermining the extraordinary reconciliation achieved since Nostra Aetate.”
Weisz had also written to the Pope’s predecessor, Pope Francis, in January, in much stronger terms, to complain about his one-sided rhetoric against Israel during the war: “Your words, magnified by modern technology, fuel a worldwide resurgence of antisemitism at a scale previous popes could never have imagined.”
Pope Leo XIV had initially inspired hope among Jews for reconciliation and better relations.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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