POPE LEO XIV – Italian Jewish world welcomes election of new pope
Healing rifts in interreligious dialogue and relations with Israel, while renewing a shared commitment to fighting antisemitism. These are the issues on which the Jewish world looks with attention to the new Pope, Leo XIV. On May 8, the Italian Jewish world welcomed the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Italian Jewish communities congratulated the new Pope “on this day of joy, which nurtures hope and opens the hearts of the faithful in all the Christian churches,” UCEI President Noemi Di Segni said in a message. “For the first time there is a Pope from the United States, a country where the Jewish presence is the most numerous in the world. The historical challenges, the difficult existential and moral trials that we are experiencing in Europe and the Middle East, in the face of devastating wars and threats, call everyone, and especially religious leaders, to the highest responsibility towards every human creature, aware of the imperative to put every effort into the pursuit of coexistence and peace.”
“We will closely follow the path that the new Pope will take in the fight against antisemitism and in the continuation of the commitment to diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. Strengthened by the dialogue that has matured between the Catholic Church and the Jewish communities in the sixty years since the encyclical Nostra Aetate, and aware that authentic friendship is based both on small daily gestures and on solemn confrontations, we join in the chorus of greetings to this new papacy, with the hope that it will bring universal reassurance and peace”.
The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Disegni, congratulated in a message the newly elected Pope and wished him success “in the challenging mission entrusted to him for the good of humanity. “I have confidence in his commitment to preserve and promote the relation of collaboration, respect and friendship between our communities,” he concluded.
The Union of Italian Young Jews also welcomed Pope Leo XIV and extended its greetings “to all the Catholic youth associations and initiatives with which we have long shared a path of interreligious dialogue based on mutual listening, knowledge and authentic confrontation.” “In his first speech, Pope Leo XIV said: ‘Let us build bridges with dialogues. It is a message that we hope will inspire a new season of encounter and openness, based on the joint construction of authentic relations and the rejection of any form of division.”
On May 13, Pope Leo XIV invited the leaders of Italy’s Jewish communities to attend the inauguration ceremony of his pontificate on 18 May 2025. “Trusting in the assistance of the Almighty, I commit myself to continuing and strengthening the dialogue and cooperation of the Church with the Jewish people in the spirit of the declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council,” Pope Leo XIV wrote.