Category: 2025 News

HAZLETON – Alberta Perez choked back tears while recalling her initial reaction to the death of Pope Francis.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said. “He was humble. He really cared. He really loved everyone.”

Perez was one of many Hispanic Catholics attending the 12:10 p.m. Mass at Annunciation Parish in Hazleton on April 21, with specific plans to pray for the late Holy Father on the day of his death.

“Our church is sad today. It’s a day that we’re never going to forget,” she added.

Fellow parishioner Martha Rojas said many Hispanics loved Pope Francis because the late Holy Father simply loved all people as human beings.

“He didn’t see color. He didn’t see race,” Rojas stated. “He loved everyone. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor.”

As the pope of the peripheries, Pope Francis brought the heart, mind, and soul of the Catholic Church in Latin America from what he called the “ends of the earth” to the center of Christendom.

The late pope’s theology, governance of the church and pastoral practices were steeped in his experience as a pastor during a military dictatorship and subsequent financial crisis in Argentina, and later as a servant of the poorest people of Buenos Aires who were living in “villas miserias,” or shantytowns.

“He was a simple man, and he tried to live out the faith authentically and be a witness to the world of Christ’s love for all of us,” parishioner Nichole Tranguch added. “We are just thankful for him and his service to the church.”

Pope Francis’ Latin roots were especially important for parishioner Maria Malaga, who also came to the Hazleton area from Latin America.

“We lost such a wonderful person who did so much for the world,” Malaga said.

Over the last two decades, the city of Hazleton has experienced a significant demographic transformation, with its Latino population now comprising two-thirds of city residents. Their arrival has brought new cultural vibrancy to Hazleton and many residents are devout Catholics.

Father Kevin Miller, Pastor, Annunciation Parish, said the passing of Pope Francis has deeply affected many parishioners at his parish, who viewed the Pope as a spiritual leader who championed inclusivity, compassion, and social justice.

“He was someone who spoke to the heart of those who were disaffected, those who were pushed to the margins,” Father Miller explained. “We look forward to honoring his memory and carrying forward many of the traditions that he started and upheld.”

Looking to the future, many parishioners plan to keep praying for the soul of Pope Francis.

“We will be saying thank you to God for having him for as long as we did,” Rojas said.

VATICAN CITY – Monsignor Christopher Washington, a Wilkes-Barre native who was ordained for the Diocese of Scranton in 2006, served as a personal aide and translator for Pope Francis since 2021.

As such, the Scranton Diocesan priest accompanied the Holy Father during his brief meeting with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday, April 20 – the Pontiff’s final official private audience before he passed away hours later on Easter Monday morning.

Less than a week later, Monsignor Washington greeted U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump when they arrived at the Vatican for the funeral Mass of Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Square April 26.

Fluent in the foreign languages of Italian, Spanish and French, Monsignor Washington has served as a member of the Diplomatic Corps of the Holy See for the past ten years.

Pope Francis elevated the Scranton Diocesan priest to the rank of Chaplain of His Holness (with the title of Monsignor) in 2019.

He previously was in the Apostolic Nunciature (Embassy of the Holy See) in Bolivia and Lithuania.

SCRANTON – More than 400 Catholic elementary school students in kindergarten through third grade recently participated in a Lenten retreat centered on themes of healing and gratitude.

Liz Devine, elementary school guidance counselor, hosted an interactive Lenten retreat at all five Catholic elementary schools in Lackawanna County: All Saints Academy in Scranton; La Salle Academy in Jessup; Our Lady of Peace School in Clarks Green; Saint Clare/Saint Paul School in Scranton; Saint Mary of Mount Carmel School in Dunmore.

The retreat centered around the bible passage of Jesus healing ten lepers on the way to Jerusalem and only one returning to give gratitude.

“We reflected on Jesus’ healing power, how the lepers had faith and acted upon it to implore Jesus’ blessings, but how the human tendency is toward ingratitude,” Devine said. “We practiced how saying ‘thank you’ and expressing gratitude nourishes our relationship with God and others.”

The students in all five schools participated in small group activities that included writing ‘thank you’ notes to people in their lives and decorating a rock with a positive message to keep as a reminder that God’s blessings are abundant.

As part of the retreat, the students were also asked to donate an item for Saint Joseph’s Baby Pantry. A total of 521 items were collected.

“Items collected included diapers, wipes, bottles, wash cloths and towels and pacifiers,” Devine said. “It is important for students to see that their donations are needed to support families right here in our community.”

Through prayer, learning, and acts of service, each retreat showed the students that compassion and gratitude know no age limit – and that even the smallest hands can make a big difference.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will attend the inaugural Mass of Pope Leo XIV on May 18, the vice president’s office said.

Pope Leo is the first U.S.-born pope.

The two officials, both Catholic, will be joined by their respective spouses, second lady Usha Vance and Jeanette Rubio, in the U.S. delegation to the Mass for the inauguration of the pope’s Petrine ministry in St. Peter’s Square.

Vance – the second Catholic to hold the vice presidency, preceded only by former President Joe Biden – was in Vatican City in April, where he met with Pope Francis on Easter, the final full day of the late pope’s life.

In February, Pope Francis released a letter to the U.S. bishops, Catholics and all people of goodwill, responding to “the major crisis that is taking place in the United States” created by President Donald Trump’s plans to target the country’s immigrants who lack legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. for mass deportation. Among those targeted are more than 10 million Christians, a majority of whom are Catholic.

In that letter, Pope Francis appeared to rebuke the vice president’s invocation of the Catholic theological concept of the “ordo amoris” (the order of love or charity) to justify Trump’s immigration policy actions. The future Pope Leo, then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, appeared to concur with the pope in a February post on X, when he shared an opinion piece from the National Catholic Reporter titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

Vance recently acknowledged the potential for both conflict and common ground with Pope Leo, noting the Catholic Church is “about the saving of souls” and its teachings do not fit neatly with 2025 American politics.

“There are a lot of views the Catholic leadership holds that are, you know, you might consider on the right side of the spectrum. There are a lot of views they’re going to hold that might be more traditionally on the left side of the spectrum. And then there are a lot of views that don’t map easily onto politics at all,” he said in an interview May 9 with conservative talk host Hugh Hewitt.

“I’m sure he’s going to say a lot of things that I love. I’m sure he’ll say some things that I disagree with, but I’ll continue to pray for him and the church despite it all and through it all, and that’ll be the way that I handle it,” Vance said.

Trump, who attended Pope Francis’ funeral April 26 and caused some controversy in May with an AI-generated image of himself as pope posted to the White House’s X account, called the first American pope “a great honor for our country.” The president told Fox News host Sean Hannity recently that Pope Leo was a “surprise choice” and he would like to speak with the pope about immigration.

Trump, who has previously mused about the idea of seeking a third term despite Constitutional term limits, recently said he would not do so, setting the stage for both Vance and Rubio to be increasingly seen as potential contenders for the GOP nomination in 2028. Both Catholic leaders are friends, and Vance has downplayed discussion of any rivalry between them in recent comments.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Teaching should be lived as ministry and mission, Pope Leo XIV told the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers or the Christian Brothers.

He praised and encouraged them to continue to pay attention to teacher training “and the creation of educating communities where teaching is enriched by the contribution of everyone.”

In fact, “an aspect of the Lasallian reality that I consider important is teaching lived as ministry and mission, as consecration in the church,” he said during an audience at the Vatican May 15 with a group of Christian Brothers.

The Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded by St. John Baptist de La Salle in 1680, is a Catholic lay religious congregation of men devoted to education and teaching. The brothers were celebrating the 300th anniversary of their recognition by Pope Benedict XIII in 1725 and the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of St. de La Salle as the patron saint of educators by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

“After three centuries, it is wonderful to see how your presence continues to bear the freshness of a rich and vast educational entity, with which, in various parts of the world, you still devote yourselves to the formation of young people with enthusiasm, fidelity and a spirit of sacrifice,” Pope Leo said.

Their saint founder “loved to say, ”Your altar is the classroom,'” which created something new in the church: lay teachers and catechists who were “invested in the community with a genuine ‘ministry,’ following the principle of evangelizing by educating and educating by evangelizing.”

St. de La Salle introduced a new way of teaching and other innovations in order to confront the challenges at the time, he said. As problems arose, the saint sought “creative answers” and forged “new and often unexplored paths” instead of being discouraged.

Today, there are new obstacles to be faced, he said. “Think of the isolation caused by widespread relational models increasingly marked by superficiality, individualism and emotional instability; the spread of patterns of thinking weakened by relativism; and the prevalence of rhythms and lifestyles in which there is not enough room for listening, reflection and dialogue – at school, in the family, sometimes among peers themselves – with the resulting loneliness.”

Even though young people are “a volcano of life, energy, feelings and ideas,” he said, they also need help “in order for this great wealth to grow in harmony, and to overcome what, albeit in a different way to the past, can still hinder their healthy development.”

Some “useful questions” to ask, he said, are “What are the most urgent challenges to be faced today in the world of young people? What values need to be promoted? What resources can we rely on?”

Pope Leo encouraged them to be like their founder and turn today’s challenges into “springboards to explore new ways, develop tools and adopt new languages to continue to touch the hearts of students, helping and encouraging them to face every obstacle with courage so that they may give the best of themselves in life, according to God’s plans.”

“The charism of the school, which you embrace with your fourth vow of teaching,” he said, is “a service to society and a valuable work of charity” as well as “one of the most beautiful and eloquent expressions of that priestly, prophetic and kingly ‘munus’ (role) that we have all received in baptism.”

“I hope that vocations to Lasallian religious consecration may grow, that they may be encouraged and promoted, in your schools and beyond, and that, in synergy with all the other formative components, they may contribute to inspiring joyful and fruitful paths of holiness among the young people who attend them,” he said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – During a meeting with Eastern Catholics, many of whom come from war-torn regions of the world, Pope Leo XIV pledged the Vatican’s full commitment to promoting peace and reconciliation.

“The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!” the pope said May 14 during an audience in the Paul VI Hall with thousands of Eastern Catholics participating in their Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome.

“War is never inevitable,” the pope told them. “Weapons can and must be silenced, for they do not resolve problems but only increase them.”

The audience was the culmination of a multi-day Jubilee celebration that included liturgies in the diverse rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches – from the Syro-Malabar and Armenian traditions to the Byzantine and Coptic rites – held in Rome’s major basilicas.

Before the pope’s arrival, a vibrant atmosphere filled the hall as pilgrims waved flags from Ukraine, India, Iran, Lebanon and other nations; many were dressed in traditional attire — vividly expressing the Eastern churches’ global presence and the deep pride in the faith despite centuries of hardship and persecution.

“Who, better than you, can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?” Pope Leo asked them, citing the lived experience of communities from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Syria and Lebanon to Tigray and the Caucasus.

On the stage alongside the pope were leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches, including: Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; Cardinal Louis Sako, the Iraq-based patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church; Indian Cardinal Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, major archbishop of Trivandrum and head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church; as well as Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.

Pope Leo offered strong support for peacebuilding efforts across the globe and reiterated the Vatican’s role as a neutral ground for diplomacy.

“The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve — the dignity of peace,” he said.

The pope also thanked Eastern Catholics for their perseverance and witness, referring to their churches as “martyr churches,” and affirming their importance to the universal church.

“You are precious in God’s eyes,” he said. “Truly, you have a unique and privileged role as the original setting where the church was born.”

The pope warned that war and migration have placed many Eastern Catholics at risk of losing not only their homes, but their identity, calling on the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches to work with Latin-rite bishops to support the faithful in the diaspora.

“There is a need to promote greater awareness among Latin Christians” of the Eastern Catholic communities, he said, asking bishops to help Eastern Catholics preserve their traditions and “enrich the communities in which they live.”

He also asked Eastern Catholic leaders to remain rooted in Gospel values and resist worldly temptations.

“Continue to be outstanding for your faith, hope and charity, and nothing else,” he urged them.

The universal church, the pope said, needs the traditions, liturgies and spiritualities of the Eastern Christians.

“We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – A proposed House budget is drawing fire from some critics over its cuts to Medicaid, while drawing praise from others for promises to eliminate funds to health providers who also perform abortions.

In a letter to Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, said the committee’s reconciliation recommendations, released May 11, would reduce deficits by more than $880 billion by 2034 and “would not increase on-budget deficits in any year after 2034.”

The committee’s recommendations for what President Donald Trump refers to as his “big, beautiful bill” — which would enact key provisions of his legislative agenda on tax and immigration policy — include steep cuts to Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, as part of an effort to reduce federal spending.

Guthrie argued in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that the recommendations, if implemented, “strengthens Medicaid” by reducing wasteful spending.

“Without Republican solutions, Washington risks a complete collapse of Medicaid,” he argued.

But Sister Mary Haddad, a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and president and CEO of Catholic Health Association of the United States said in a May 12 statement the organization is “deeply concerned” that the proposal “to overhaul Medicaid still includes harmful policies and hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the federal Medicaid program, threatening access to care for millions of Americans — particularly those in underserved areas where our member systems work every single day to provide quality, compassionate care.”

“Changes to work reporting requirements, provider tax, state directed payments, and retroactive coverage are among the concerning policies in this legislation,” Sister Haddad said, pointing to CBO projections “that 8.6 million people will lose access to health insurance over the next decade as a result of this proposal.”

“Congress has a moral obligation to consider the harm that such disastrous cuts would have on America’s health safety net and the impacts this proposal would have for America’s most vulnerable communities,” Sister Haddad argued, adding that “cascading effects of lost coverage, including higher costs and greater strain on the system, will impact nearly all Americans — not just those who rely on Medicaid.”

“As we have continued to state: Medicaid is not just a health program — it is a lifeline,” she said. “It provides access to care for those who need it most — poor and vulnerable children, pregnant women, elderly, adults, and disabled individuals in our nation while ensuring their dignity. Congress should not take America down a dangerous path of drastically reducing access to health care in the United States. We will continue to work with House Republicans and all federal lawmakers to ensure our health safety net remains intact so that our health systems can continue to provide vital care to American patients and families.”

But some pro-life groups celebrated language in the committee proposal that would block entities that perform abortions from receiving Medicaid funds.

Although the text does not name Planned Parenthood specifically, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that works to elect candidates who oppose abortion to public office, is among those pushing their congressional allies to strip federal funding from the nation’s largest abortion provider in the process.

“It’s time to stop forcing taxpayers to fund the Big Abortion industry,” Dannenfelser argued in a May 12 statement. “Thanks to Speaker Johnson and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, this year’s budget reconciliation bill contains the commonsense language to make that happen.”

“Taxpayers should never be mandated to prop up an industry that profits from ending lives and harming women and girls,” Dannenfelser said, pointing to Planned Parenthood’s new annual report showing an increase in abortions and a decrease in cancer treatment and prevention services.

Supporters of allowing Planned Parenthood to receive Medicaid funds point to its cancer screening and prevention services, but critics argue the funds are fungible and could be used to facilitate abortion, despite prohibitions on tax funding for elective abortion procedures. Efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of public funds are sometimes referred to as “defunding.”

“With this proposal, abortion opponents in Congress have declared they want working families to take on skyrocketing health care costs so they can give billionaires a tax break,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, argued in a May 11 statement. “Here is what ‘defunding’ Planned Parenthood and gutting Medicaid will mean: cancers will go undetected; it will be harder than ever to get birth control; the nation’s STI (sexually transmitted infections) crisis will worsen; Planned Parenthood health centers will close, making it significantly harder to get abortion care; and people across the country will suffer — all so the supremely wealthy can become even richer.”

But Dannenfelser argued community health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities, and they can “provide much more comprehensive care without performing abortions — and because Medicaid dollars follow patients, they can continue to use Medicaid.”

“Forcing Americans to fund the abortion industry is a gross abuse of our hard-earned tax dollars and it’s unconscionable how long it has gone on,” Dannenfelser said, calling it “a historic opportunity” to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s federal funds.

However, a group of House Republicans have reportedly expressed opposition to eliminating Planned Parenthood’s federal funding through the budget reconciliation process.

Abortion in the U.S. is heavily correlated with poverty and low incomes. The abortion research firm Guttmacher Institute reported 75% of women seeking abortion were low-income, with 50% below the federal poverty line. About six out of 10 women seeking abortion were already mothers. The top concerns reported included not being able to afford another child, losing the ability to work or continue education, or having to care for dependents or other family responsibilities.

CHICAGO (OSV News) – “In honor of Pope Leo XIV, I’m going to have a thin crust pizza,” said Augustinian seminarian Brother Nathan Fernandes, a former chef at a fine dining Italian restaurant, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Chicago-born pope’s now permanent home in Rome.

Best known to this year’s set of seminarians from the Augustinian Midwest Province as Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, the native Chicagoan had just been elected pope the day before, on May 8, and the seminarians were taking a breather from the media frenzy that had descended on their formation house’s quiet block in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

But as details of Pope Leo’s past life come to light one thing, many are struck by his Chicago roots and his Chicago-ness.

Brother Nathan, a Canadian, told OSV News he knows in Chicago he’s swimming against the tide of deep-dish pizza that is a big part of this town’s signature fare.

And it’s a tide that Louis Prevost said he believes his youngest brother, Pope Leo XIV, still rides.

“I think it’s a place like Giordano’s,” Louis Prevost told OSV News. On the phone from his home on the southwest coast of Florida, he referred to what he thought was his brother’s preference, one of the city’s popular deep dish pizza joints. He said, with his brother Rob going off to seminary at 13, at the same time that he was drafted to the military, he remembered more of the pope’s childhood preferences.

“He liked cooking, he liked Italian food,” confirmed Augustinian Father John Lydon, a college classmate and longtime friend from Pope Leo’s missionary days in Peru. “After he studied at (Catholic Theological Union, graduating in 1982), he had gone to Italy for his doctoral degree in canon law. So he would prepare pizza for us.”

Father Lydon, the formator of the seminarians, stood at the sunlit front steps of the theologate where the pope used to be the formator in the early 2000s. He told OSV News the pizzas then-Father Prevost made were not deep dish.

“We were in a poor place, living more simply than you can imagine here in the United States. So you had to make the pizza go for a lot of people, the crust had to be thin. He liked, and we talked about, Chicago-style pizza. But in Peru in the ’90s … that would have been luxurious,” said the formator, himself a Canadian.

Louis Prevost, 73, said his “baby brother” ate just about everything that was placed in front of him, and still does today. He said among other typical Chicago food, Pope Leo would prefer a Chicago-style hotdog — no ketchup, which is usually on a poppy seed bun with onions and bright green pickle relish among other toppings. And he had just learned that another Chicago staple, the Italian beef sandwich, was being marketed with hot or sweet peppers as “The Leo” for a limited time at Portillo’s, a Chicago hotdog and sandwich chain. But he said he couldn’t recall if his brother was actually an Italian beef type.

He and his brothers grew up in a deeply Catholic home in a south suburb on the edge of Chicago, where the rosary was said every night before dinner. Louis Prevost said the family had fish on Fridays, which he himself “grew to not like.” Pope Leo, on the other hand, had “no problem with it,” and apparently, neither did the 69-year old have any problem with entirely exotic foods that he would tell his big brother about on the phone while traveling around the world as prior general of the Augustinians.

He described one occasion when then-Father Prevost, Augustinian prior general, ate a special delicacy at a restaurant with a delegation of leaders in an Asian country. It was a plate of moving seafood that he was told should be swallowed.

Louis Prevost, a retired chief petty officer with the Navy, said he had his own share of eating unfamiliar food. But he had to interrupt his brother’s story. “It’s one thing to eat fried calamari. But when they’re alive and you can feel them trying to save themselves, wriggling back up (your throat) … I was like, ‘Stop! Don’t tell me anymore!'” He said his brother simply took it with no complaints.

“They made him feel welcome and he accepted it gratefully, gracefully and continued in good graces with these people. … Who knows how much they spent to put that together for him and why would he (say no)? What would they think? Oh, no. He’s not that kind of guy,” said Louis Prevost.

Since the three boys were mostly tennis players, Louis Prevost said Pope Leo didn’t follow all the city’s big-name sports teams like the Chicago Bulls (basketball), nor the Bears (football) and certainly not the Cubs on the city’s Northside. “He was big into baseball” but “he was a big (White) Sox fan.” Years later in the late ’80s through the ’90s in Peru, his then-superior in the Augustinians’ vicariate, a fellow Southsider, said being so far from home, they dropped hardcore preferences and supported all Chicago teams, even the Cubs.

Louis Prevost described the family’s regular outings to distinctly Chicago destinations like yearly trips to State Street at Christmas time to look at the storefront of Marshall Field’s department store. For more than a century the famous displays of dolls and toy animals in motion depicted Christmas scenes. That would be followed by a meal at the Berghoff, an iconic German fine dining restaurant at the heart of downtown Chicago, where Louis said the restaurant offered special treats for children.

Louis Prevost said their father used to take them to Chicago landmarks that satisfied their curious children’s minds: the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park, the Field Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute, both downtown. The eldest brother found art boring, but said his youngest brother most likely would have liked the Art Institute.

Louis Prevost pointed to his brother’s decades living outside of the U.S. in the developing world, as a missionary in Peru, and then in Rome, along with knowing multiple languages and extensive international travels visiting Augustinians, holding leadership roles assigned by the late Pope Francis, combined with a distinctly Chicago upbringing. He said, as a Catholic, he couldn’t think of a more well-rounded background for a pontiff as leader of the church now.

“He went to places where I didn’t expect there to be Catholics; China, Korea, Japan … India or even Pakistan. These places, ‘we have Augustinians there,'” he recalled his brother saying.”‘I have to go there to promote the faith’ and that’s what he did. He went to all these places, maybe some with a little trepidation, but he did it. And I look at it and think, OK, what does it take to be pope? Well, you ought to know the people you’re trying to shepherd, right?”

On a personal note, Father Thomas Joseph White, the American rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, told OSV News May 12 that “seeing the pope in a White Sox jersey at a 2005 World Series game in Chicago fills me with a mix of healthy spiritual joy and serious bemusement.”

“It’s a little soon to say, but I would predict that the people of Chicago are going to lose their minds because the pope is going to do something like say Mass in the White Sox stadium, and it’s going to be a White Sox fan as pope saying Mass in the stadium. And there’s going to be people dressed like the Blues Brothers holding up signs that say: ‘We’re on a mission from God.’ I think it’ll be, you know, very colorful.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Among his first messages, Pope Leo XIV expressed his intention to strengthen the Catholic Church’s ties with the Jewish community.

“Trusting in the assistance of the Almighty, I pledge to continue and strengthen the church’s dialogue and cooperation with the Jewish people in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration ‘Nostra Aetate,'” the pope wrote in a message to Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Promulgated 60 years ago, “Nostra Aetate” affirmed the Catholic Church’s spiritual kinship with the Jewish people and condemned all forms of anti-Semitism.

The pope’s message signed May 8 – the day of his election – was posted on the AJC’s X account May 13.

The AJC is an advocacy group that “stands up for Israel’s right to exist in peace and security; confronts antisemitism, no matter the source; and upholds the democratic values that unite Jews and our allies,” according to its website.

Although Pope Leo did not address the Israel-Hamas war explicitly after praying the “Regina Coeli” with pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square May 11, he called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.

“Let humanitarian aid be provided to the stricken civil population, and let all the hostages be freed,” he said.

Pope Leo also sent a personal message to Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, “informing him of his election as the new pontiff,” according to a statement posted May 13 on the Facebook page of Rome’s Jewish community.

In his message, the statement said, “Pope Leo XIV committed himself to continuing and strengthening the dialogue and cooperation of the church with the Jewish people in the spirit of the Vatican II declaration ‘Nostra Aetate.'”

“The chief rabbi of Rome, who will be present at the celebration of the inauguration of the pontificate (May 18), welcomed with satisfaction and gratitude the words addressed to him by the new pope,” the statement added.

Jews have lived in Rome since long before Christ was born, and centuries of interaction between the city’s Jewish community and the popes means Jewish-Vatican relations in the city have a unique history, much of it sad.

In 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI visited the Rome synagogue, the staff of the Jewish Museum of Rome, located in the synagogue complex, planned a special exhibit illustrating part of that history.

The centerpiece of the exhibit was comprised of 14 decorative panels made by Jewish artists to mark the inauguration of the pontificates of Popes Clement XII, Clement XIII, Clement XIV and Pius VI in the 1700s.

For hundreds of years, the Jewish community was obliged to participate in the ceremonies surrounding the enthronement of new popes — often in a humiliating manner.

Various groups in the city were assigned to decorate different sections of the pope’s route between the Vatican and the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the pope’s cathedral. The Jewish community was responsible for the stretch of road between the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus, which celebrates the Roman Empire’s victory over the Jews of Jerusalem in the first century. The Roman victory included the destruction of the Temple, Judaism’s holiest site, and the triumphal arch depicts Roman soldiers carrying off the menorah and other Jewish liturgical items.