On no other religion does the Catholic Church speak so singularly as it does on Judaism. It regards other religious traditions from the outside, with respect and discernment; but Judaism, it carries within itself as its own root. Pope Francis summed it up in one phrase: the people of the Covenant and their faith are “a sacred root of its own Christian identity”[1], to the point of affirming that “we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion”[2]. Jesus is Jewish, Mary is Jewish, the Apostles are Jewish, the Old Testament is the Church’s sacred Scripture, and the Eucharist is instituted during a Jewish Passover meal.
Yet, a decisive difference remains, touching the very heart of Christian faith: for the Church, Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised to Israel, the Son of God made man, who died and rose for the salvation of the world. Judaism, however, does not recognize this identity and continues to await the Messiah. All Catholic teaching on Judaism rests on this tension: a unique closeness and a real divergence, which must be held together without yielding to either contempt or relativism.
This article answers a precise question: what does the Catholic Church say about Judaism today? It does not retell the history of Israel nor detail the arguments for Jesus’ messiahship—that is the subject of the dossier Judaism. It sets forth the doctrine: the status of the Jewish root, the turning point of Nostra aetate, the end of the accusation that the Jews were a “deicidal people”, the never revoked Covenant, the delicate question of the salvation of the Jews and mission, the attitude of “elder brothers” expected of every Catholic, and the eschatological hope of Romans 9-11.
Is Judaism a foreign religion for the Church?
The first thing the Church says about Judaism is negative in form but decisive in content: it is not a foreign religion. This is precisely what absolutely distinguishes Judaism from all other religious traditions in the eyes of Catholic faith.
A root, not just another religion
The Catechism places the Jewish people in a special category, one it does not share with any other non-Christian religion. Where it views other beliefs as sincere searches but external to Revelation, it recognizes in the Jewish faith a response to Revelation itself:
“When the Church scrutinizes her own mystery, the People of God of the New Covenant, she discovers her link with the Jewish people ‘to whom God spoke first.’ Unlike other non-Christian religions, the Jewish faith is already a response to God’s Revelation in the Old Covenant.”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 839[3]
The consequence is immense. Christianity does not present itself as a new religion that replaced an outdated one, but as the fulfillment of a promise made to Israel. That is why the Church has always rejected Marcionism—the 2nd-century heresy that sought to reject the Old Testament and oppose a “God of the Old Testament” to a “God of Jesus.” For the Church, it is the same God who calls Abraham and who raises Christ from the dead.
Jesus, Mary, the Apostles: a Christianity born Jewish
Nostra aetate grounds this closeness on a historical and theological fact that cannot be erased: everything in the Christian origins is Jewish.
“The Church of Christ recognizes that the beginnings of her faith and election are found, according to the divine mystery of salvation, with the Patriarchs, Moses, and the Prophets. (...) The Church cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through this people with whom God, in his ineffable mercy, deigned to make the Ancient Covenant.”
— Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4[4]
Christ is “born of the race of David according to the flesh,” the Apostles come from the Jewish people, and it is from this people, writes Saint Paul, “that Christ came according to the flesh”[5]. Christian liturgy inherits the Psalms; the Our Father belongs to the Jewish prayer of its time; and the Eucharist was instituted “during the Passover meal”: it “fulfils the Jewish Passover”[6]. To detach Christianity from its Jewish root would be to cut it off from itself. For the historical unfolding of this root—patriarchs, Exodus, kingship, prophets, Temple—see the dossier Judaism.
What exactly does Nostra aetate say?
All contemporary Catholic perspectives on Judaism pass through a brief but decisive text: the declaration Nostra aetate, promulgated on October 28, 1965, during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. The declaration has five paragraphs, the fourth of which, the longest, is entirely devoted to relations with the Jewish people. In just a few lines, it changed centuries of strained relations.
Three landmark affirmations
Nostra aetate § 4 articulates three central affirmations. The first recalls, as we have seen, the Jewish root of the Christian faith. The second rejects a theological interpretation that had poisoned history: the idea that the Jews are a people “rejected” or “cursed” by God.
“Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not, therefore, be presented as rejected or cursed by God, as if this followed from Sacred Scripture.”
— Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4[7]
The third condemns antisemitism with an unprecedented clarity in a conciliar text:
“The Church, which rejects every persecution against any man, cannot forget the patrimony she shares with the Jews, and, moved not by political motives but by the religious charity of the Gospel, deplores hatred, persecutions, and all manifestations of antisemitism, directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.”
— Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4[8]
This condemnation is not merely a pastoral stance: it has a doctrinal status. Antisemitism is not simply a political fault or a moral coarseness; for the Church, it is contrary to the Gospel itself.
Why this text was a turning point
Before Nostra aetate, part of Christian preaching had for centuries spread what the Jewish historian Jules Isaac — received by John XXIII in 1960 — called the “teaching of contempt”: portraying the Jews as deicides, interpreting their dispersion as punishment, caricaturing the Law. Nostra aetate cuts this logic at its root. The text does not resolve everything — it remains sober, almost allusive on some points — but it sets the framework within which subsequent popes would develop a genuine theology of the Jewish people. The historical weight of this anti-Judaism, and the particular question of Pius XII’s attitude during the Shoah, are treated separately in Christian Anti-Judaism and the Silence of Pius XII and The Church and the Shoah.
Are the Jews responsible for the death of Jesus?
This is undoubtedly the most exploited question in the entire history of Jewish-Christian relations. For centuries, the accusation that the Jews were a “deicidal people” — “the Jews killed God” — served to justify contempt, discrimination, and violence. The Church has today explicitly repudiated this accusation, and this repudiation is not a diplomatic concession: it arises from a more accurate reading of the Gospels themselves.
The end of the collective accusation
The Catechism states the doctrine with a precision that must be quoted in full, as every word matters:
“Taking into account the historical complexity of the trial of Jesus as presented in the Gospel accounts, and whatever the personal sins of the participants in the trial (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate), known only to God, the responsibility for Jesus’ death cannot be charged against all the Jews of Jerusalem, despite the cries of a manipulated crowd and the broad reproaches contained in the calls to conversion after Pentecost. (...) Still less can responsibility be extended, on the basis of the cry of the people — ‘May his blood be upon us and upon our children’ (Mt 27:25), which signifies a formula of ratification — to other Jews in space and time.”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 597[9]
The Church goes further: in the following paragraph, it “does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torment of Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone”[10]. It is the sin of every man — not a particular people — that crucifies the Savior.
Benedict XVI and the most misused verse
The verse from Matthew 27:25 — “His blood be on us and on our children!” — was, for centuries, read as a self-curse of Israel. Benedict XVI, in the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth (2011), offers a rereading that completely reverses this interpretation:
“When, in Matthew, ‘all the people’ say ‘his blood be on us and on our children,’ the Christian will remember that the blood of Jesus speaks a language different from that of Abel: it does not demand vengeance and punishment, it is reconciliation. It is not shed against someone, it is shed for many, for all.”
— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2, 2011[11]
The blood of Christ, far from crying out for vengeance against Israel, is shed for Israel as for all nations. This is, in the magisterium of a pope, one of the deepest rereadings of the verse most distorted by anti-Judaism.
Is the Covenant with Israel revoked?
Here is the properly theological question, and one of the most delicate. If Christianity is the New Covenant, is the Old one abolished? Has the Jewish people become, since the coming of Christ, an “obsolete” people, whose election has passed to the Church? The answer of the contemporary Church is clear and constant: no.
“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”
The decisive formula comes from Saint Paul himself, at the heart of chapters 9 to 11 of the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle meditates on the mystery of Israel:
“Certainly, concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake; but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.”
— Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 11:28-29[12]
Pope Francis has made this verse the core of current doctrine:
“A very special regard is directed to the Jewish people, whose Covenant with God has never been revoked, for ‘the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable’ (Rom 11:29).”
— Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, § 247[13]
This affirmation — “the Covenant has never been revoked” — does not appear as such in Nostra aetate. It was first clearly formulated by John Paul II, in Mainz, on November 17, 1980, when he spoke “of the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God”[14]. The Catechism has taken it up as its own[15]. Israel’s election is therefore not a title that the Church would have “confiscated”: it is a fidelity of God that remains.
One Covenant, two moments
How then to understand the relationship between the Old and New Covenants? The theology of continuity, as clarified by the reflection of the Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (December 10, 2015) — a reflection text, distinct from the magisterium —, rejects two symmetrical errors. On one side, the supersessionist theory (or “supersessionist theology”), according to which the Church would have simply replaced Israel: this is rejected. On the other side, the idea of two parallel and independent Covenants, which would save separately — one by the Torah, the other by Christ — without any relation: this is also rejected. The Church holds to a unity in distinction: the New Covenant is the fulfillment and not the abolition of the Old, in the faithfulness of the same God.
How does Judaism really differ from the Catholic faith?
Proximity must not obscure divergence, nor divergence destroy proximity. The difference between Judaism and Christianity is neither slight nor secondary: it concerns the identity of Jesus, therefore the center of faith.
What the Church confesses — and Judaism does not confess
For the Church, Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a great prophet or a Jewish teacher among others. He is the Messiah announced by the prophets, and more: the Son of God made man, true God and true man, who died and rose again. It is precisely this double affirmation — messiahship and divinity — that rabbinic Judaism cannot accept: a crucified Messiah contradicts the expectation of a glorious liberator, and the claim that a man is God seems to contradict the absolute unity proclaimed in the Shema Israel (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is One”, Dt 6:4). The Church responds that it confesses not multiple gods, but a Trinitarian monotheism: one God in three Persons. The details of the arguments in favor of Jesus’ messiahship — prophecies, Daniel 9, destruction of the Temple in 70, Resurrection — are developed in the dossier Judaism and in The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70.
Two expectations of the Messiah
The Catechism finely formulates what draws together and what separates the Jewish and Christian expectations. Both peoples hope for the coming of the Messiah; but they do not hope for him in the same way:
“When one considers the future, the People of God of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend toward analogous goals: the expectation of the coming (or return) of the Messiah. But on one side, the expectation is that of the return of the Messiah, dead and risen, recognized as Lord and Son of God; on the other, it is the advent of the Messiah, whose features remain veiled, at the end of time — an expectation accompanied by the drama of ignorance or misunderstanding regarding Christ Jesus.”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 840[16]
Christianity awaits the return of the One who has already come; Judaism awaits a first coming. The divergence is therefore not about the messianic hope itself, but about the person of Jesus.
Can Jews Be Saved Without Recognizing Christ?
This is the most sensitive question and the one on which the most confusion is heard. The Church holds together two affirmations that many believe to be incompatible: there are not two paths to salvation, and yet the Jews are not excluded from salvation. Understanding this requires precision.
Not Two Parallel Paths
The Commission’s reflection (2015) first unequivocally rejects the idea of a “double path” that would save Jews through the Torah and Christians through Christ, as two impermeable systems:
“Since God has never revoked his covenant with Israel, his people, there cannot be two different ways or approaches leading to God’s salvation. To affirm that there are two different paths, that of the Jews without Christ and that with Christ, who is for Christians Jesus of Nazareth, would call into question the very foundations of the Christian faith.”
— Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, § 35[17]
The uniqueness of salvation in Jesus Christ is maintained: “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The Church does not renounce confessing Christ as the one Savior.
An Unfathomable Divine Mystery
And yet, the Church refuses to conclude that Jews are damned because they have not recognized Jesus. It honestly embraces here a tension it does not claim to resolve:
“From the Christian profession of faith that there is only one way to salvation, it does not follow in any way that the Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they have not recognized Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God. (...) From the theological point of view, the fact that the Jews share in God’s salvation is indisputable; but how this is possible, since they do not explicitly confess Christ, remains an unfathomable divine mystery.”
— Holy See Commission, The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, § 36[18]
The position is therefore neither relativism (“all religions are equal”) nor hard exclusivism (“outside explicit confession of Christ, no salvation”). It is a trust in the faithfulness of God toward his people, whose mode remains enveloped in the mystery of the divine plan. For the more general doctrine of salvation outside the visible Church, see What Does the Church Say About the Salvation of Non-Christians?; the case of Israel is treated there precisely apart, because of the never-revoked Covenant.
Does the Church Seek to Convert the Jews?
From this theology flows a practical consequence that often surprises: the Catholic Church does not organize a specific mission aimed at converting the Jews, unlike its attitude toward other peoples. This is not a renunciation of the truth of Christ; it is a restraint dictated by Israel’s unique status.
No Organized Institutional Mission
The Commission’s text (2015) states this explicitly:
“The Catholic Church does not conduct or promote any specific institutional missionary action directed toward the Jews. Yet while the Church rejects in principle any institutional mission to the Jews, Christians are nevertheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ before the Jews, with humility and delicacy [...]”
— Holy See Commission, The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, § 40[19]
The distinction is subtle but important. The Church does not set up a targeted proselytizing program aimed at Jews, as if they were pagans to be torn away from their idols. But it also does not ask Christians to conceal their faith: witness remains, “with humility and delicacy”, respecting freedom and the painful history that too often turned “mission” into coercion.
Witness, Yes; Forced Proselytism, No
Francis summarized this balance in Evangelii gaudium: “As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion, nor classify Jews among those who are called to leave idols to convert to the true God”[20]. The believing Jew already worships the true God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The situation is therefore without parallel: it is not a matter of moving him from error to truth, but of witnessing that this truth he serves has, for Christians, a face: that of Jesus, son of Israel.
“Our Elder Brothers”: What Attitude Does the Church Ask For?
Beyond doctrine, the Church asks Catholics for a specific interior attitude toward the Jewish people: neither indifference nor condescension, but gratitude, respect, and fraternity. The recent popes have embodied this through gestures that have become famous.
John Paul II at the Rome Synagogue (1986)
On April 13, 1986, John Paul II crossed the threshold of the Great Synagogue of Rome—the first pope to enter a synagogue since the Apostle Peter. In the presence of Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, he pronounced the now emblematic phrase:
“The Jewish religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but, in a certain sense, it is ‘intrinsic’ to our religion. Therefore, we have relations with it that we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”
— Saint John Paul II, address at the Rome Synagogue, April 13, 1986[21]
The expression “elder brothers” has become the reference formula for Jewish-Christian dialogue. On March 26, 2000, during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the same pope slipped a prayer into a crack of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, asking forgiveness for the sufferings inflicted on the “people of the Covenant” throughout history, and committing himself “to authentic fraternity” with them[22].
Benedict XVI: “Our Fathers in Faith”
Benedict XVI extended and nuanced this legacy. Sensitive to the fact that, in biblical tradition, the “elder brother” is sometimes the figure of one who is surpassed (Esau, the elder son in the parable), he preferred to speak of the Jews as “our fathers in faith”—emphasizing that Israel’s eldership is not only chronological but spiritual[23]. He multiplied gestures: visit to the Cologne synagogue (August 19, 2005), a moving meditation at Auschwitz “as a son of the German people” (May 28, 2006), visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome (January 17, 2010).
Repentance and Vigilance Against Antisemitism
The attitude requested is not mere courtesy: it includes repentance for past faults and active vigilance against any resurgence of antisemitism. The Vatican document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” (March 16, 1998) acknowledges the gravity of Christian anti-Judaism and its role in weakening moral resistance to the Nazi genocide[24]. The Church does not present itself as innocent: it asks for forgiveness. The details of this history are treated in Christian Anti-Judaism and the Silence of Pius XII.
What Hope Does the Church Nourish for Israel?
Catholic teaching does not stop at noting the divergence: it concludes with a hope. Saint Paul, in chapters 9 to 11 of the Epistle to the Romans, refuses to believe that God has abandoned his people, and announces a mysterious outcome that the Church embraces.
The “Fullness of Israel”
The Catechism takes up this Pauline hope and links it to the glorious coming of Christ at the end of time:
“The entry of ‘the fullness of the Jews’ into the messianic salvation, following ‘the fullness of the Gentiles,’ will give the People of God the realization of ‘the fullness of Christ’ in which ‘God will be all in all.’”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 674[25]
Salvation history is therefore not over. The Church believes that the destiny of Israel and that of the nations are linked, and that the final fulfillment includes the Jewish people—not by coercion, but according to the unfathomable plan of God, “at the time he wills.” This is why the Catholic liturgy, since the reform of Good Friday, prays no longer against but for the Jews, “that they may grow in love of his Name and in fidelity to his Covenant”[26].
A Mystery of Love and Fidelity
Before this hope, Saint Paul himself does not retreat into a system: he bows in adoration. The Church does the same. The final word on Judaism is neither a verdict nor a strategy, but a doxology:
“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
— Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 11:33[27]
This is, ultimately, what the Church says about Judaism: a people “beloved for the sake of their fathers,” whose Covenant remains, from whom she receives her Savior according to the flesh, whom she loves as an elder brother, and whom she awaits, without forcing, to one day recognize, “at the time appointed by God,” the face of the One they have always awaited.
For Further Reading
- Judaism — the complete file: history of Israel, messianic expectation, the break around Jesus, and arguments in favor of his messiahship.
- Christian Antijudaism and the Silence of Pius XII — a historical examination of Christian antijudaism and the role of Pius XII during the Shoah.
- The Church and the Shoah — the attitude of the Church toward the genocide of the Jews of Europe.
- The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 — the event that gave rise to rabbinic Judaism and its significance in Christian argumentation.
- What Does the Church Say About the Salvation of Non-Christians? — the doctrine of salvation outside the visible Church, where the case of Israel is treated separately.
- What Does the Church Say About Islam? — to compare the Catholic perspective on another major monotheistic religion.
Notes and References
Pope Francis, apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, November 24, 2013, § 247, official text on vatican.va: “As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion (...). The Church (...) regards the people of the Covenant and its faith as a sacred root of its own Christian identity.”
1 2 13Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 839, Libreria Editrice Vaticana / Mame-Plon, Paris, 1992, quoting the Roman Missal, Good Friday, universal prayer VI (“the Jewish people to whom God first spoke”).
3Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra aetate, October 28, 1965, § 4, official text on vatican.va: “The Church of Christ recognizes that the beginnings of her faith and election are found (...) with the Patriarchs, Moses, and the Prophets.”
4Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 9:4-5 (liturgical translation AELF): to the Israelites “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises (...) and from whom, according to the flesh, is the Christ.” Quoted by CCC § 839.
5Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1340, op. cit.: “In celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles during the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning”; the Eucharist “fulfils the Jewish Passover.”
6Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate, § 4, op. cit.: “The Jews must not, therefore, be presented as rejected or cursed by God, as if this followed from Sacred Scripture.”
7Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate, § 4, op. cit.: the Church “deplores hatred, persecutions, and all manifestations of antisemitism which, regardless of their time and authors, have been directed against the Jews.”
8Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 597, op. cit.: on the historical responsibility for the trial of Jesus. The formula “what was committed during the Passion cannot be charged either indiscriminately to all the Jews living then, or to the Jews of our time” is that of the Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra aetate, 28 October 1965, § 4 (official text on vatican.va), taken up by the Catechism in the same paragraph.
9Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 598, op. cit.: the Church “does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torment of Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone”; quoting the Catechism of the Council of Trent, I, 5, 11.
10Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), Jesus of Nazareth — Volume 2: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, Éd. du Rocher, 2011, ch. 7 (on the reading of Mt 27:25). Original German text: Jesus von Nazareth, Zweiter Teil, Herder, 2011.
11Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 11:28-29 (liturgical translation AELF). The AELF translation uses “enemies” and “without repentance”; the 2015 document, § 39, and the common magisterial formula use “irrevocable.”
12Saint John Paul II, speech to representatives of the Jewish community, Mainz, November 17, 1980: evocation “of the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God.” First clear magisterial formulation of the non-revoked Covenant, cited by the 2015 document, § 39.
14Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 121, op. cit.: “The Old Covenant has never been revoked.”
15Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 840, op. cit.: on the “analogous” expectations of the Messiah and “the tragedy of ignorance or misunderstanding regarding Christ Jesus.”
16Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” (Rom 11:29) — A Theological Reflection on Relations Between Catholics and Jews on the 50th Anniversary of Nostra aetate, December 10, 2015, § 35, official text on christianunity.va.
17Holy See Commission, The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, December 10, 2015, § 36, op. cit.: the salvation of the Jews remains “an unfathomable divine mystery.”
18Holy See Commission, The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable, December 10, 2015, § 40, op. cit. (official French text on christianunity.va, collated word for word; the sentence of § 40 continues after “delicacy” — “recognizing that the Jews are custodians of the Word of God and ever mindful of the immense tragedy of the Shoah” — hence the final [...] in the body): the Church “does not conduct or promote any specific institutional missionary action directed toward the Jews,” while calling for witness “with humility and delicacy.”
19Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, § 247, op. cit.: “we cannot (...) classify the Jews among those who are called to leave idols to convert to the true God.”
20Saint John Paul II, address at the Great Synagogue of Rome, April 13, 1986, official text on vatican.va: “You are our beloved brothers and, in a certain way, one could say our elder brothers.”
21Saint John Paul II, text of the prayer placed in the Western Wall, Jerusalem, March 26, 2000 (jubilee pilgrimage to the Holy Land): asking forgiveness for the sufferings inflicted on the people of the Covenant and commitment “to authentic fraternity.”
22Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), Light of the World — The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times. An Interview with Peter Seewald, Bayard, 2010 (trans. Nicole Mannoni and Olivier Mancip), ch. 8 of the interview (entitled “In the Shoes of the Fisherman” in the English edition): to Seewald’s remark — “you speak of them as our ‘fathers in faith’” — he replies that they are indeed also our “fathers in faith,” the expression “elder brothers” (already used by John XXIII) being potentially hurtful because, in the Jewish tradition, the elder brother — Esau — is also the one who is rejected.
23Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” March 16, 1998, official text on vatican.va: recognition of the faults of Christians and of antijudaism that weakened moral resistance to persecution.
24Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 674, op. cit.: on “the fullness of the Jews” (Rom 11:12) entering messianic salvation following “the fullness of the Gentiles” (Rom 11:25).
25Roman Missal, universal prayer of Good Friday “For the Jews” (ordinary form from the post-conciliar liturgical reform): prayer that the Jewish people “may grow in the love of [His] Name and in fidelity to [His] Covenant.”
26Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 11:33: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
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