JTA — A senior priest in the Catholic Church of Romania on Thursday appeared to liken Jews to a virus, in a filmed Easter greeting.
The reference was part of the message, sent out to national television stations, by Father Francisc Dobos, the spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Bucharest.
The disciples of Jesus, he said, reading from the Christian Bible, “feared the Jews, and here in the bracket we should read: feared the virus.”
In an open letter, the head of a Romanian group devoted to fighting anti-Semitism wrote that Dobos’s apparent effort to make his message more relatable by connecting Scripture to present-day concerns and fears fell short.
“Unfortunately, what many of the listeners of your message will [hear will] be the comparison between Jews and a killer virus,” said Maximillian Marco Katz, director of the MCA Romania Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. “And so the traditional religious anti-Semitism is passed down from generation to generation, for over 2,000 years.”
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the
terms
It's not (only) about you.
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we'll remove all ads from your page and you'll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.
Join the Times of Israel Community
Join our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
You're a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this