“Those of us here today,” he said, “are eager to promote our bond with the Catholic Church. Today, we launch the process of ‘Kishreinu,’ [which] reinforces the common future of our two people. It presents a new stage in the Catholic-Jewish bond.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said “with our shared heritage, we have a common responsibility to work together for the good of humankind, refuting antisemitism and anti-Catholic and anti-Christian attitudes, as well as all kinds of discrimination, to work for justice, solidarity, and peace, to spread compassion and mercy in an often cold and merciless world.”
Pope Francis said: “In light of the religious heritage that we share, let us regard the present as a challenge that unites us, as an incentive to act together.”
“Our two communities of faith are entrusted with the task of working to make the world more fraternal, combating forms of inequality and promoting greater justice, so that peace will not remain an otherworldly promise but become a present reality in our world,” he said.
The pope emphasized the importance of justice for building peaceful coexistence in the world.
“How many human beings,” he said, “created in the image and likeness of God, are violated in their dignity as the result of the injustice that racks our world and represents the underlying cause of so many conflicts, the swamp that breeds wars and violence.”
“The One who created all things with order and harmony urges us to cleanse this swamp of injustice that engulfs fraternal coexistence in the world, even as environmental devastations compromise the health of the earth,” he added.
He also pointed out faith’s role in teaching us that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and said the Scriptures remind us of the importance of inviting God into our actions.
“In other words, our political, cultural, and social initiatives to better the world — what you call Tikkun Olam — will never prove successful without prayer and without fraternal openness to other creatures in the name of the one Creator, who loves life and blesses those who are peacemakers,” he said.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
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