Pope Francis leads the Sunday Angelus prayer at the Vatican on November 15, 2015.(AFP/VINCENZO PINTO)
VATICAN CITY, Holy See — Pope Francis is to become the third pontiff to visit Rome’s main synagogue, where he will meet members of the Italian capital’s Jewish community on January 17, the Vatican announced Tuesday.
Rome’s Great Synagogue is located just across the River Tiber from the Vatican, in an area still known as the Ghetto where, under the orders of Francis’s predecessors, Jews were confined for more than three centuries until their emancipation at the end of the 19th Century.
John-Paul II became the first pope to visit the synagogue in 1986 and Francis’s predecessor Benoit XVI followed suit in 2010, underlining greatly improved relations between the two faiths.
Ties have become warmer under Francis, who has a long-standing friendship with Argentinian rabbi Abraham Skorka, with whom he jointly published a book of conversations about issues of ethics, morality and faith.
Rome’s Great Synagogue (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel staff)
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