DIALOGUE – Italian rabbis: a critical time with the Church

The Day of Jewish-Christian Dialogue (17 January) has two themes this year. The Jubilee, the theme chosen for this 36th edition, but above all the Jewish world’s alarm at the continuing rift with the Catholic Church. “We are facing a moment of crisis in inter-religious dialogue”, said Alfonso Arbib, Chief Rabbi of Milan and President of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly. Speaking to the Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, in the auditorium of the Ambrosianeum Cultural Foundation in Milan, the rabbi stressed that “this year there has been a lack of empathy and an underestimation of the problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism” on the part of the highest echelons of the Church, starting with the Pope.
A message echoed in the same hours in Rome by the city’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni. “This is a moment when it seems that the Church, or a part of it, is once again succumbing to the temptation to break off relations with Judaism. The war that has been unleashed since October 7 has had Jewish-Christian dialogue as one of its collateral victims,” the Rav underlined. With the war unleashed by Hamas, “an anti-Israeli hostility has emerged in the world, sometimes limited to criticism of the government and its prime minister, but at other times extending to the Jewish people who had shown solidarity with the fate of a threatened Israel”. In this way, a vocabulary was disseminated that was “functional for demonising and overturning the guilt of genocide”. Words with ancient roots in anti-Judaism were used: the cruelty of the Jews, the desire for revenge, the attack on children. And while all this was going on”, rav Di Segni also said, “representatives of the Church, instead of “balancing these words, relaunched them and took them up again”. And so they acted as a sounding board and moral support for the condemnation of Israel.
The Chief Rabbi of Rome went on to underline Israel’s historical ability to provoke disproportionate reactions. “Israel’s special position in history and faith has often led humanity to express itself towards Israel in the worst possible way, as in these days,” the rabbi concluded. “This is the challenge for those who still hope for dialogue. A dialogue that has been ruined for months, but which is not and must not be, for those who believe, a trivial event to be interrupted.”
Criticism was also voiced at other meetings in Italy, such as in Catania, where the chief rabbi of Naples, Cesare Moscati, and the vice-president of UCEI, Giulio Disegni, spoke, highlighting the imbalance in the statements made by the Church leadership on what is happening in the Israel-Hamas conflict.