JERUSALEM – Della Pergola recounts his meeting with “possible future pope” Cardinal Pizzaballa
Everyone is betting on who will succeed Pope Francis. Among the experts, one of the favorites is Italian Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who comes from Bergamo (Lombardy). He has served as Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 2020 and was previously appointed Custos of the Holy Land, head of the Franciscan priory known as the Custody of the Holy Land. He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2023.
Pizzaballa, 60, has attended the pope’s funerals and will participate in the conclave to choose the new pope, scheduled forMay 7. Despite his busy schedule, before leaving for Rome he took the time to meet with Italian-Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio Della Pergola, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an influential representative of Italkim (the Italians in Israel).
“The Cardinal gave me permission to speak about our meeting,” Della Pergola told Pagine Ebraiche. “We have known each other for many years, and, in the past, I had the pleasure of inviting him to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied, and to the Italian synagogue in Jerusalem. My request to meet him, made before the Pope’s death, stems from the need to clarify some of his statements on the conflict in Gaza, which have been instrumentalized on the Internet”.
Pizzaballa has often been outspoken about Israel, and even after the Pope’s death he stressed that Gaza was “in a way one of the symbols of his pontificate.” In his meeting with Della Pergola, the demographer said, the churchman stressed the importance of being careful with words, “agreeing that sometimes some have been used inappropriately in the public debate. It is the case of accusing Israel of committing genocide or practicing apartheid policies”.
These are words, Della Pergola pointed out, “that Pizzaballa affirmed he never used, although he acknowledged that the problem is complex and evidently also Israel is not blameless for the situation.”
Della Pergola described a “warm and fair” meeting, inaugurated by some meaningful presents to the cardinal. First, the autobiography of Rome’s historic former chief rabbi Toaff Perfidi giudei, Fratelli maggiori (Perfidious Jews, elder brothers). Recently translated into Hebrew (a language that Pizzaballa knows very well), the book contains a touching description of the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to Rome’s Great Synagogue. Then, some research papers on antisemitism resulted from Della Pergola’s international conferences. In one of these, in Texas, he called attention to the responsibilities of the Catholic Church in the steps backward in the relation between Jewish and Christian communities after October 7. Before taking their leaves, concluded Pergola, the two have joked about the possible nomination as pope of Pizzaballa: “He smiled. These are things people say, he added. I cannot do anything about it.”
Translated by Rebecca Luna Escobar, student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainee in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities — Pagine Ebraiche.