A new Vatican decree approved by Pope Leo marks 60 years since Nostra Aetate, calls fighting antisemitism a shared struggle and also condemns Islamophobia.
Pope Leo said on Wednesday that recent conflicts in the Middle East have tested relations between Jews and Christians, and that differing views of the violence have strained dialogue between the two faiths without breaking it.
The statement came in a new decree marking six decades of the Catholic Church's efforts at interreligious dialogue since Nostra Aetate, the landmark 1965 declaration of the Second Vatican Council. The decree was developed by three senior Vatican offices and approved by the pope, Reuters reported.
"The conflicts that have erupted in the Middle East in recent years have ... left their mark on Jewish-Christian dialogue," the decree said.
The document describes the fight against antisemitism as a "shared struggle" for Jews and Christians. It also reiterates the Church's condemnation of Islamophobia, saying such attitudes fail to distinguish between cases of extremist violence and the everyday lives of the world's Muslims.
Nostra Aetate, Latin for "In Our Time," was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965. It was the Church's first formal denunciation of antisemitism, and it rejected the charge, used for centuries to justify persecution of Jews, that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for the death of Jesus. (Read More)