Pope Francis cared deeply about Holy Land, Jews, but left ‘sour taste’ after Oct. 7

With his death at age 88 after 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis was remembered by experts on Jewish-Catholic relations for his compassion and personal humility, as well as his work to continue the path of his predecessors on ties with Jewish leaders.

At the same time, some noted with regret that ties took a turn after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, and the subsequent war in Gaza.

“He’s going to be remembered for his concern for economic justice in the world, for the most poverty-stricken parts of the world,” said Saint Joseph’s University scholar Philip Cunningham.

Pope Francis, who died a day after making a public appearance at Saint Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, said early in his papacy that the Church needed “shepherds with the smell of the sheep,” who lived with the people they cared for.

“He constantly spoke out against every form of clericalism and elitism on the part of Church leaders,” explained Murray Watson, an expert on Catholic-Jewish relations, “and challenged them to be humble servants of those they were called to serve.”

He also tried to make the Church more relevant in a Western world where secularism was on the rise and church pews were empty on Sundays.

“He tried to adapt to these trends to create a church that is more friendly, more welcoming, and he did this by adopting an agenda that I would call progressive or greener,” said Rafi Shotz, Israel’s envoy to the Holy See until last year.

In Jerusalem, local Catholic officials noted how Francis conducted himself as a priest and as pope.

“He gave the church an example of life through his actions, through his needs,” said Farid Jubran, advisor to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Elected in March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the first pope to take the name Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century mystic who renounced his wealth and devoted his life to the poor.

The Argentinian pontiff wore plain robes, avoided the sumptuous papal palaces and made his own phone calls.

The football-loving former archbishop of Buenos Aires was also more accessible than his predecessors, chatting with young people about issues ranging from social media to pornography — and talking openly about his health.

He also showed a particular interest in the Holy Land, and in the complex relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

One of his first trips abroad as Pope was to Israel, where he placed a note in the Western Wall, visited national Holocaust museum Yad Vashem and stopped by the grave of Zionist visionary Theodore Herzl.

He also made an unscheduled stop at the concrete security barrier between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. According to his driver, they were driving by a section of the wall covered by graffiti comparing Bethlehem and the Warsaw Ghetto when the pope asked to be let out. The image of him praying at that spot excited Palestinians and angered Israelis.

During the ongoing war in Gaza, Francis made sure to call Gaza’s only Catholic Church every evening, and granted audiences to Israeli hostage families and freed hostages.

He was also the Pope who elevated the Patriarch of Jerusalem to a Cardinal.

“For us, it’s a day of sadness,” noted Jubran, “but also of gratitude to the Lord and to him for his service to the church.”

Next steps

The near future is fairly certain for the Vatican.

Francis’s body will be taken to St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday, where his body will lie in state as worshippers pay their final respects.

His funeral — simplified after changes he implemented — will be held on Saturday.

During the “Sede Vacante” period — Latin for “while the chair [of St Peter] is empty” — most Vatican functions will cease, while preparations are made for the funeral and the conclave to elect Francis’s successor.

The cardinals will also hold daily meetings to keep watch over the Catholic Church globally until there is a new pope.

“There will be tremendous sadness, of course,” said Watson. “The Pope is the sovereign of Vatican City, and it is a tiny state, so everyone there will be personally touched by his death. But it will also be an extremely busy place, preparing for both of those upcoming events.”

The longer-term future is cloudier.

The 135 cardinals will set that future with their election of the next pope. Some 108 were appointed by Francis, raising the likelihood that they will select someone who will continue many of his priorities.

Many expect the next pope to come from Latin America, as Francis did, or Africa, as the Catholic world shifts from Europe toward the Global South.

At the same time, there could be a push for a more traditionalist leader after internal fights over innovations and controversial statements during Francis’s tenure.

“There are some who are going to be more doctrinally focused and have an attitude that church doctrine cannot change very much,” said Cunningham. “But I don’t think Francis has really changed church doctrine very much.”

The cardinals might also want to elect an Italian, after three consecutive non-Italian popes.

One of the Italian names on the short list is Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who has lived in Israel for over three decades, and is a fluent Hebrew speaker.

After the October 7 attacks, Pizzaballa said that he would offer himself in exchange for Hamas’s Israeli hostages if it would help bring children home.

“In my opinion, it would be wonderful if he were elected, not just because he comes from here and he understands us, but because he’s such an exceptionally bright and good person,” said Rabbi David Rosen, former American Jewish Committee international director of interreligious affairs.

“Catholics believe that, in each papacy, God gives us the pope that we need for the current moment, and I am trusting that will be the case once again,” Watson added. “It would be a shame to lose the warmth and compassion we saw embodied in Pope Francis…but of course, every pope has their own unique personality and life story.”

Dates and soccer cleats

Those who enjoyed audiences with the pope were struck by his personability and charm.

“Francis was a warm, communicative man, and I racked my brains over what to bring him,” said Shotz, recalling the ceremony during which he presented his letter of credence to the pope.

Recognizing Francis’s commitment to environmental issues, he decided on a package of Medjoul dates from the Arava desert grown in desalinated water. He also brought blue and white soccer cleats, the national colors of both Israel and Argentina, with “peace” written on them in Hebrew, Arabic and Spanish.

“He loved both gifts,” said Shotz.

Watson and Cunningham both met Francis during the 2015 Rome conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews, marking the 50th anniversary of Nostre Aetate, the Vatican document that revolutionized Catholic-Jewish relations.

“He had a huge smile on his face, despite the fact that I was one of the last people in line,” said Watson. “I was impressed by his warmth and kindness, and the priority he gave to meeting us one by one, given the many pressing things that must have been on his agenda that day.”

“Since I was [International Council of Christians and Jews] President at the time,” recalled Cunningham, “I got a chance to talk with him a little bit personally, to give him a gift, and invite him to come to my university when he was in Philadelphia a couple of months later.”

Indeed, that September Francis visited St. Joseph’s University, and blessed a sculpture commissioned for the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate.

The piece shows two female figures, Synagoga and Ecclesia, sitting and studying together as equals.

Living knowledge of the Jewish community

In many ways, Pope Francis continued the work of popes John Paul II and  Benedict XVI in building ties with Jewish leaders and addressing antisemitism in the church.

“There’s never been a pope who has had as much engagement with the Jewish community before he became pope,” said Rosen.

While Francis was still Bergoglio, he established a close friendship with local Buenos Aires Jewish leaders and with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, with whom he wrote a book and remained in contact. He opened the cathedral in Buenos Aires to Holocaust commemorations, and visited synagogues on Jewish holidays.

“This was a man who had a living knowledge of the Jewish community,” said Rosen. “You could say maybe the most knowledge any Pope had since Peter.”

As pope, he also took important steps to move forward Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

“God continues to work among the people of the Old Covenant and to bring forth treasures of wisdom which flow from their encounter with his word,” he said in his 2013 Evangelii Gaudium. “For this reason, the Church also is enriched when she receives the values of Judaism.”

However, he was at times less careful — or perhaps less attentive — than his two predecessors when it came to Jews and their sensitivities.

In 2019, the pontiff was urged by experts to take greater care when referring to “hypocritical” Pharisees, a stereotype that fueled centuries of bad blood between Catholics and Jews.

Two years later, Francis told an audience that the law of the Jewish Torah “does not give life, it does not offer the fulfillment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfill it. The Law is a journey, a journey that leads toward an encounter… Those who seek life need to look to the promise and its fulfillment in Christ.”

The disconnect could come from the fact that, unlike his predecessors, Francis did not witness the Holocaust firsthand, and it did not shape his worldview as a young man.

It could also come from his personal and theological background.

“He came from Latin America and was very much influenced by liberation theology and had a certain, if you like, negative attitude towards America and the West,” said Rosen, “and tended to have an attitude of equivalency with regards to a violent perpetrator traitor and the reaction of the victim.”

‘Disastrous’ response to October 7

After October 7, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the Pope’s statements and tweets left Jews feeling confused at times, and under attack at others.

In a November 2023 call with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, Francis reportedly said it is “forbidden to respond to terror with terror.”

Shortly after the attacks, hundreds of Jewish leaders and scholars wrote an open letter to Francis, asking the Church to unequivocally condemn Hamas’s attacks and to distinguish terrorism from Israel’s war on the group.

It took three months for the Pope to respond in a letter that condemned antisemitism, reaffirmed the bond between the Church and Jews, and stressed that his “heart is torn at the sight of what is happening in the Holy Land, by the power of so much division and so much hatred” — but failed to mention Hamas.

German Catholic theologian Gregor Maria Hoff blasted the Pope’s response: “It is not enough to condemn violence without unambiguously identifying the responsible actors. It does not help to invoke the ‘path of friendship, solidarity and cooperation’ while the Jewish partner has to fight for his survival in his own country and on its borders.”

Another letter from the pontiff, this one addressed to Middle East Catholics on the one-year anniversary of October 7, confounded those who care about Catholic-Jewish relations.

Francis decried “the fuse of hatred” lit the year before (though notably did not lay out who struck the match) and lamented “the spirit of evil that foments war.”

Then, quoting one of the New Testament verses most often used to justify Christian antisemitism, he wrote that this spirit was “murderous from the beginning,” and “a liar and the father of lies.”

“It is impossible to overstate what a disaster this is for Jewish-Catholic relations,” wrote Villanova University professor Ethan Schwartz.

In November 2024, Francis called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute “genocide,” according to excerpts from a forthcoming new book ahead of the pontiff’s jubilee year.

A month earlier, a seasonal nativity scene at the Vatican — at which Francis prayed — was removed after backlash over its depiction of the baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh, the traditional scarf used by Palestinians as a national symbol.

The nativity scene drew criticism as it was suggestive of the trope that Jesus was a Palestinian rather than Jewish.

“It wasn’t in his DNA,” Shotz said, “and it’s very possible that this fact made him a little less sensitive to the importance of issues among us Israeli Jews than his predecessors.”

He thought he was pro-Jewish

The next pope is sure to continue developing ties and dialogue with the Jewish world, but he, too, might lack a sensitivity toward Jewish concerns. If a Cardinal from the developing world is elected, the next pope could well come from a part of the globe with no Jewish community and for whom Jewish-Catholic dialogue has not been a priority.

Whoever succeeds him, because the next pope must be younger than 80, Francis will be the last pope from the generation that was alive during the Holocaust.

“He was a Pope who was justifiably seen as very pro-Jewish, and I think he thought he was,” Rosen said. “Nevertheless, he ended his papacy on a rather sour note with the Jewish people, which is a shame.”