Pope in the Roman Synagogue

The Pope began his visit with a few moments of silence next to the plaque commemorating the victims of the Shoah who were deported from Rome to the death camps. Before entering the synagogue building, he stopped next to the plaque commemorating Stefano Tache, the two year old boy killed in a terrorist attack on the synagogue in 1982.

In the synagogue, many notables awaited him, including the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, his predecessor who had welcomed Pope John Paul II to the synagogue in 1986, Rabbi Elio Toaff, the heads of the Jewish community in Italy, rabbis from Israel and foremost among them the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Shear Yashuv Cohen and the Israeli deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom. Prominent among those present was a group of Holocaust survivors.

The delegation of the Pope included the secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and the responsible for dialogue with the Jews, Cardinal Walther Kasper as well as a delegation from Israel including the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Galilee, Elias Chacour, the Vatican Nuncio, Mgr. Antonio Franco, and the Bishop of Nazareth, Boulos Marcuzzo. The heads of the Muslim community in Italy were also present in the synagogue.

The President of the Jewish communities in Italy, Renzo Gattegna, warmly welcomed the Pope to the synagogue. After him, Chief Rabbi Di Segni spoke at length, mentioning both the difficult and graced moments in the relations between Jews and Catholics in Italy. He emphasized the shared obligation of Jews and Catholics to build a better world. The head of the Jewish community in Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, mentioned Jewish disappointment with regard to Pope Pius XII, however he also mentioned that many Jews had found refuge in Catholic monasteries and among them his own father, Emanuele, who had been sheltered in a convent of sisters in Florence.

The Pope in his speech mentioned the terrible time of the Shoah and noted that the Holy See had acted during the period in hidden and discrete ways to help save the Jews. In his speech, the Pope asked that Jews and Christians deepen the links between them. He consecrated a good part of the speech to the common heritage of Jews and Christians, particularly in the Ten Commandments, that serve as a basis for wide collaboration in human society. The Holy Father ended his speech citing the verses from the Psalms in Hebrew.

This visit again underlines the blessed time we live in when bishops and rabbis, Jews and Catholics, meet as brothers!

Video summary in Italian

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Read speech of Pope

Video the Pope's arrival at the synagogue

Video of scenes from the visit to the Synagogue