For Rome’s Jews, ties with ailing pope are personal. And increasingly complicated
With 2,000 years of history between the Jewish community and the Catholic Church, relations have been positive in recent decades. But October 7 has stirred up age-old apprehensions
Rossella Tercatin is The Times of Israel's archaeology and religions reporter.
Monday, March 3, was marked in Bruno Limentani’s calendar as a very important day. The 63-year-old Roman Jewish businessman was supposed to meet with Pope Francis to choose a porcelain dining set from Limentani’s company’s collection for the pontiff’s personal apartment. Today, the pope is hospitalized following a respiratory crisis; the appointment was canceled.
Named after its founder Leone Limentani, the company started providing glasses and china to the Vatican over 150 years ago. As the seventh generation of his family in the business, Limentani has personally gifted a 24-piece porcelain set to both John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
“When Jorge Bergoglio was elected in 2013, we reached out to the pope’s staff, but his secretary declined our offer, suggesting that he was not interested,” Limentani told the Times of Israel in a phone interview. “We were a little disappointed.”
However, just a few weeks ago, a mutual acquaintance mentioned the story to Francis. The pope responded that he would be delighted to receive the dining set.
“Apparently, nobody had asked him before,” said Limentani. “I am sad to see that he is sick.”
The story of the Limentani family and its special connection with the Vatican are not unique in the Jewish community of Rome.
The eternal people in the eternal city
The Jews of Rome have lived in the eternal city for over two millennia, most of which was under the rule of the Catholic Church.
Contrary to what happened in other areas of the papal state and all over Italy and Europe, Jews were constantly persecuted but never expelled from Rome. They served a specific theological purpose, offering a perennial testimony to what happened to those who did not accept Jesus.
“The pope was the king of the Jews of Rome for a very long time, in a relationship that was marked by deep ambiguity, with discrimination on the one hand and forms of protection on the other,” said Serena Di Nepi, an associate professor of Early Modern History at La Sapienza – University of Rome, whose expertise includes the social dynamics of the Roman Ghetto.
“The Church presented Rome as the new Jerusalem,” she told The Times of Israel. “The Jews of Rome were persecuted with the specific aim of bringing them to a path of conversion to Christianity. In the meantime, their life was supposed to be difficult but not impossible.”
Notably, Jews were compelled to pay tribute to newly elected popes under the Arch of Titus, the monumental structure celebrating Rome’s victory against Judeans and the destruction of Jerusalem. Until 1870, they were also forced to attend a priest’s sermon aimed at their conversion on Saturday afternoons.
Di Nepi herself comes from a Jewish family that has been in Rome at least since the establishment of the Ghetto in 1555. The family story goes that on September 20, 1870, when the Italian army conquered Rome, ending the pope’s temporal power, one of her ancestors, the daughter of the chief rabbi of the community, sneaked out of her house and spent the night exploring the city, to her father’s great dismay.
While the Ghetto was abolished in 1870, the neighborhood still represents the beating heart of Jewish life in Rome, with today’s community boasting around 14,000 members.
Limentani’s store has been located there in the Portico D’Ottavia Street, or, as the Jews of Rome affectionately call it, the “piazza,” for over a century. The business was established in 1820.
“At the time, Jews were only allowed to sell rags and secondhand items,” Limentani said. “My ancestor Leone would collect used glass and bring it to a glassworks to melt it and receive glasses to sell.”
Some 50 years later, his grandchild, also named Leone, was granted a special papal passport, allowing him to spend several nights a month outside the Ghetto. In the same period, the Vatican started to buy Limentani’s products. In the upcoming decades, the business flourished.
The Holocaust’s long shadow
The Holocaust represented another crucial moment in the relations between the Jews of Rome and the Church.
In 1943, the Nazis occupied the city.
While many Jews found shelter in convents — including Di Nepi’s uncle and grandmother and Limentani’s father — the Jewish community feels that Pius XII could have done much more.
“On October 16, 1943, the Nazis raided the Jewish neighborhood,” Di Nepi said. “They feared a backlash from the pope, and for three days, they kept the Jews in the city. However, the pope only worked to save those who had converted to Christianity. The rest were sent to Auschwitz.”
During the Nazi occupation, the Limentani store was used as a headquarters by the SS.
“They looted or destroyed everything,” Limentani said. “Nothing from our collections before 1943 survived.”
After the war, the business enjoyed the effects of Italy’s rapid economic growth. The Limentanis became providers of high-end dishware for international leaders, including Argentinian first lady Evita Peron and Persian shah Reza Pahlavi.
Limentani remembers John Paul II with great affection. “He chose a dining set with big bowls because he said that as a Pole, he liked to eat a lot of soup,” Limentani recalled.
A pope pays a visit
Limentani’s father David developed a personal relationship with the pope, to the point that John Paul asked him to discreetly gauge the opinion of Rome’s chief rabbi Elio Toaff on the idea of a visit to the synagogue. The visit then happened in 1986.
“The visit of John Paul marked a historic turning point, which impacted people more than any theological document could,” Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. In 1986, Di Segni was in the audience for the pope’s visit, while in 2009 and 2016, when Benedict and Francis also visited the synagogue, he welcomed them as the city’s chief rabbi.
Di Segni met with Francis several times over the years.
“When Francis was appointed, it soon became clear how active he was in his dialogue with the Jewish communities,” Di Segni recalled. “Jewish delegations visited him from all over the world very frequently, to the point that I joked that maybe they needed a synagogue in the Vatican.”
According to the rabbi, Bergoglio’s visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome also sent an important message to the city’s Jewish community.
However, Di Segni noted that the relations have become more complicated after October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded and massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, wounded thousands, and abducted 251 hostages to Gaza.
“Moved by a very pacifist attitude, the pope has sided against Israel’s reaction in a very strong way,” Di Segni said. “This has created discontent in our community.”
Over the past 16 months, Francis often criticized Israel’s actions in the subsequent war against Hamas in Gaza in harsh terms. In November, he called for an investigation to probe whether these actions constitute genocide. A few weeks later, the Vatican’s Nativity scene featuring a baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh — a Palestinian symbol — sparked outrage in Rome as well as the rest of the world.
“Many perceive the pope’s statements as a lack of empathy toward what Jews have been facing,” Di Segni said. “It has not been just a question of politics, but also of doctrine, which has left us concerned over a possible regression from the achievements of decades of dialogue.”
Di Segni said that some language appeared to be reminiscent of the Christian stereotype of the vengeful Jew. The keffiyeh incident was perceived by many as a denial of the Jewish identity of Jesus.
“After October 7, I think that people feel that it is impossible to trust the pope fully,” said Di Nepi.
According to the historian, the relationship between the Church and the Jews is still marked by ambiguity.
“While it is true that the Church abolished the prayer for the ‘evil Jews,’ the question of missionizing Israel still exists, although much has changed in terms of approach and modalities,” Di Nepi said. “This is the challenge of the Jewish-Christian dialogue.”
Di Segni highlighted that these questions have accompanied the history of the city and its Jewish community for a long time.
“A church here features frescoes depicting the theological dispute between pope Sylvester and the chief rabbi of Rome before Roman emperor Constantine,” Di Segni said, referring to the Oratorio Saint Sylvester church, completed in 1246. (Constantine granted Christianity legal status in the empire and eventually converted in the 4th century CE.)
“This showcases how far these discussions go back,” Di Segni said.
Asked about his personal relationship with Francis, the rabbi said it has always been cordial.
“I wish him a refuah shelema, full recovery,” he said. “I hope he feels better soon.”
For more on Catholic-Jewish relations, listen here:
The Times of Israel Community.