American Catholic and Jewish leaders and community members gathered on April 16 Saint John Paul II National Shrine In Washington, DC, to reflect on Catholic-Jewish relations 40 years after Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome.
On April 13, 1986, Pope John Paul II did what no other Pope had ever done when he entered the synagogue and was greeted by Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff. There, he notably declared that “We have a relationship with Judaism that we do not have with any other religion.”
Most memorably, he added, “You are our very dear brother and in a way it can be said that you are our elder brother.”
Co-sponsored at the memorial event Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism and St. John Paul II National Shrine, Eric Cohen, President and CEO Tikva FundAn influential Jewish think tank praised Pope John Paul II as “one of the greatest philosophers, religious leaders, and statesmen of the modern era.”
Similarly, Katherine Szkop, director of public affairs at Israel’s Embassy in the United States, recalled of her Polish father that “In Poland you can say you don’t like Jesus and someone will say, ‘That’s your opinion,’ but if you say you don’t like Pope John Paul II, they’ll ask in very colorful language, ‘What’s wrong with you?'”
Katherine Szkop speaks at the National Shrine of St. John Paul II in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2026. Credit: Tessa Gervasini/EWTN News
In addition to being the first Pope to visit a synagogue in nearly 2,000 years, Szkop said John Paul II was also the first Pope to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem and established diplomatic relations with the State of Israel in 1994.
Cohen described anti-Semitism as “a perverse inversion of the election of the Jews to play a unique role in history, to be a light unto the nations, and to bring the Biblical vision of goodness to the world”, and that “it is the use of the Jewish people as a tool in a campaign of nihilism and or a campaign for a version of the Almighty that seeks radical submission not by covenant but by the sword.”
Cohen said, “I believe that Jews and Christians have a calling and a call to stand together against this rebellion against the Bible and to stand up for the covenant renewal of the West.”
He added, “And I believe in that project, America is unique.”
America as a uniquely Hebrew and potential nation
Cohen recalls 1790 Letter The nation’s first president, George Washington, to congregants of the Savannah, Georgia Jewish Synagogue.
Washington wrote: “The same miraculous God, who long ago delivered the Hebrews from the oppressors of Egypt and settled them in the promised land – whose providential agency has recently been conspicuous in establishing these United States of America as an independent nation – still continues to water them with the dew of heaven and let the inhabitants of every sect participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of those whose God is Jehovah.
In addition to protecting religious freedom, Cohen pointed out, Washington apparently “pushed the idea that you can’t understand America if you don’t see it as a potential nation made in the image of the Israelites. That it is almost the chosen nation.”
‘Big brother’ perspective
Speaking specifically from the perspective of the “elder brother in the faith”, Cohen urged both Jews and Christians to remember that “the theology of love, the theology that seeks peace, is not a denial of the reality of evil.”
He said, “Evil is real, and evil sometimes has to be resisted with power and force, and that’s what the Hebrew Bible teaches.” Referencing Catholic just war doctrine, Cohen stressed that now more than ever, “we need to reaffirm and reinterpret that just war tradition.”
He warned both his Catholic and Jewish listeners present, which included diocesan and Dominican clergy as well as members. American Sephardi Federation“Not abandoning the Bible’s teachings about why the use of force is sometimes necessary.”
Cohen also urged Jews and Catholics to work together “for the religious education of our children.”
Calling it “the great civil rights battle of our age,” he said: “We have to stand together for a renewal and a renaissance of religious education. That should be the model in America. And the sad thing is that it is a very small minority of young Americans who are educated in religious schools.
Cohen attributed this situation to a system in the country that until recently was geared against religious schools and “in favor of secularism.”
He stressed, “We have to stand together with the conviction that if we are going to renounce our beliefs, we need an America that welcomes and celebrates religious education.”
On being ‘a blessing to one another’
“Relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community have never been more optimistic or positive than they are today,” Szkop said.
George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and author ofWitness of Hope: Biography of Pope John Paul IIBoth the Catholic and Jewish communities are potentially entangled, not just because we are living in the same place, trying to straighten out the same country, trying to protect the same good things in the world.
Papal biographer George Weigel speaks at the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2026. Credit: Ken Oliver/EWTN News
“We are potentially theologically entangled,” Weigel continued. “It will take some time for us to reconcile our common views, but I believe that the dialogue has begun over the past six decades (referring to the 1965 Vatican II document) nostra aetate) And I think it can only be enriching for both parties.”
Weigel concluded, “The full meaning of that entanglement will be revealed only in the fullness of the Kingdom of God, to which both Jews and Christians must hope.”
