Pope encourages Christian-Jewish dialogue

The Holy Father - Voice of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI received a delegation of twenty members of B'nai Brit International (Sons of the Alliance), one of the oldest Jewish service organizations in the world on Thursday, May 12th. In his speech (click here for full text), the Holy Father praised two recent meetings on Jewish-Christian relations. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Fouad Twal, participated in those meetings. The Holy Father highlighted the distinctive role of the organization in promoting dialogue between Catholic and Jewish communities worldwide. He also referred to the challenges that both communities face in our rapidly changing world. The first meeting was held from February 27 to March 2 in Paris. It was attended by the International Jewish-Catholic Liaison Committee marking 40 years of dialogue between the Holy See and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC). "What happened in those forty years must be regarded as a great gift of the Lord," Pope Benedict XVI recalled yesterday. "There are many ways in which Jews and Christians can cooperate for the good of the world." He concluded by saying, "one of the most important things we can do together is to bring a common witness to our conviction that every man and woman is created in the divine image."(Gen.1:26-27) The second meeting which the Holy Father referred to was held on March 29 to 31 in Jerusalem. It was a meeting between the Bilateral Commission of the delegation of the Holy See's Committee for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The Pope stressed the need "to disseminate an understanding of the role of religion in social life, which corrects the strictly horizontal and distorted vision of the person and coexistence."