The Pope Francis Effect and Catholic-Jewish Relations The_Pope_Francis_Effect | Page 2

The Pope Francis Effect
and Catholic-Jewish Relations
CCJR 13TH ANNUAL MEETING PROCEEDING
NOAM E. MARANS 1

In evaluating the trajectory of Catholic-Jewish
Relations in the Pope Francis era, one picture is worth a
thousand words. Pope Francis has identified Marc Chagall’s
White Crucifixion as one of his favorite paintings. 2 In
the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938, when hundreds
of European synagogues were torched, foreshadowing
greater evil yet to come, Chagall artistically interpreted the
threat of Nazism within the continuum of anti-Semitism.
A “Jewish Jesus” is on the cross, wearing a tallit (prayer
shawl) loincloth and surrounded by scenes of persecuted
and fleeing Jews. A synagogue and its Torah scrolls are
engulfed in flames, torched by a Nazi brownshirt. Using
conflicting imagery, Chagall delivers his warning: the Jews
who were persecuted as Christ-killers are now crucified as
Jesus the Jew once was.

Pope Francis did not hesitate to publicly herald a
painting featuring a syncretistic “Jewish Jesus” that
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POPE FRANCIS AT THE WESTERN WALL
MAY 25, 2014
1. Rabbi Noam E. Marans is AJC’s director of Interreligious and Intergroup
Relations. A version of this paper was delivered on October 26, 2014 at the
CCJR (Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations) 13th Annual Meeting
in Mobile, Alabama. It was subsequently published in Studies in Christian-
Jewish Relations, Vol 10, No 1 (2015). The research assistance of AJC colleague
Dahlia Herzog in preparing this article is acknowledged with gratitude.
2. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., “A Big Heart Open to God: The Exclusive Interview
with Pope Francis,” America, Sept. 30, 2013 issue, http://americamagazine.org/
pope-interview, accessed March 4, 2015. White Crucifixion can be viewed at
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/59426, accessed March 4, 2015.
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