Thought for the Week

Dear Members and Friends,

Last Monday, after appearing on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to address the crowds amassed in Vatican Square on Easter Sunday, Pope Francis, the Vatican’s first Latin American and Jesuit Pope, died after twelve years as head of the Catholic Church.  The Pope was a man of humility, who allied himself with the world’s poor and dispossessed, who championed the cause of refugees and asylum seekers and whose commitment to dialogue is embodied in the book he wrote with the Argentinian Rabbi Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth.  I wonder if he knew it would be the last time he spoke to his people, to all those who admired him for his piety, his rejection of the glories of his office, his earnest desire for peace. And I wonder if he knew this was his farewell, on the most important day of the Christian calendar, celebrating for Christians, the resurrection of Jesus.
 
As a Jesuit Provincial, living through the horrendous years of the Desaparecidos – the ‘Disappeared’, the word used to refer to people arrested and never seen again during the military regime that ruled from 1976 to 1983 in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he then was, hid people for days until they could find safer hiding places.
 
His meetings with Rabbi Abraham Skorka became significant encounters where the two men could sit together and talk in an intimate and candid way on matters of local society, global concerns and the evidence of goodness – and evil – that surrounded them.
 
In his reflection on the façade of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, depicting the encounter between Joseph and his brothers, Bergoglio writes:
 
‘Decades of misunderstandings converge in that embrace. There is weeping among them and also an endearing question: Is my father still alive? … It represented the longing for a reuniting of Argentineans…Is it true that we Argentineans do not want dialogue? I would not say it that way. Rather I think that we succumb to attitudes that do not permit us to dialogue: domination, not knowing how to listen, annoyance in our speech, preconceived judgements and so many others.’
 
Dialogue, he writes:
 
‘is born from a respectful attitude toward the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It supposes that we can make room in our heart for their point of view, their opinion and their proposals. Dialogue entails a warm reception and not a pre-emptive condemnation. To dialogue, one must know how to lower the defences, to open the doors of one’s home and to offer warmth.’
The encounters of these two men were born of a friendship and an intimate trust and openness between them. They never had to compromise their respective religious identities – one Catholic, the other Jewish. And this was not only out of the respect they had for each other, but because of their faith – an awareness that each was walking in the presence of God and striving to be the best individual they could be. Humility, said Bergoglio, is what levels the paths for an encounter.
 
When there is humility, he writes, it becomes possible to resolve conflict, not by seeking uniformity, but by encouraging people to ‘walk together in reconciled diversity’, by doing things together, by praying together. If only we could hear those words within our own Anglo-Jewish community at a time of such disunity and conflict. Imagine walking together with our fellow Jews from across the religious and ideological spectrum in this ‘reconciled diversity’, just being able to listen to each other and live side by side with each other, without resorting to bitter and cruel attacks through social media.
 
Pope Francis was a man who reached out with love, compassion and humility, who washed the feet of prisoners in the Regina Coeli prison, who showed people that he cared for others, that they were not alone, having to fight their own battles as refugees, asylum seekers, impoverished, gay people, individuals on the margins of society.
 
The world has lost a man of goodness, a man who understood the aching pain of others, a fearless man, a man of truth, reconciliation and peace.  Pope Francis taught us all the value of prayer, spirituality and religious truth, an abiding care for the environment and a commitment to our relationships with others.
 
Shabbat Shalom,
 
Alexandra Wright

Click here to find a copy of emails sent on the death of Pope Francis by the LJS to Canon Kevin Jordan of the Church of Our Lady, Lisson Grove and Canon Kevin’s response.