On June 24, 2013, the leadership of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), of which I was fortunate to be a member, met Pope Francis. He opened by saying: “The Council recalls the teaching of Saint Paul, who wrote ‘the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable’ and who also firmly condemned hatred, persecution and all forms of antisemitism. Due to our common roots, a Christian cannot be antisemitic!”

Thus, Pope Francis began the meeting. And ever since then, in all my visits to the Vatican and in various meetings there, I felt his deep commitment to stand against hatred of Jews and to formulate this as a central value in the life of every Catholic believer.

But Pope Francis aspired much higher. In October 2020, he published “Fratelli Tutti,” calling on religions and religious leaders, in an increasingly radicalized world, to live lives of brotherhood and lead humanity to choose it. He followed in the footsteps of Hillel the Elder, who taught: “In a time of scattering – gather” (Berakhot 63a), and called us all to gather anew in the name of human brotherhood and to make the idea a lighthouse and hope for the entire world.

As I followed the figure of the Pope over the years, I saw a leader who paved a way toward human responsibility. Responsibility toward the brother, the poor, the refugee, the creation and creatures, the family, the elderly, the children, and their future.

But the most moving moment of all for me was when he called to establish a network of women leaders from all religions under the auspices of the Vatican and asked to bring us together and meet with us. I was privileged to be among these women, and it’s hard to describe the powerful emotions at that conference.

The Pope insisted that women’s leadership is important for stopping hatred and destruction and for creating a language of faith and responsibility. He insisted on meeting us and telling this. He insisted on personally blessing each one of us and the religion and country from which we came and honoring their contribution.

At the end of the meeting, one of the women approached the Pope and knelt. Pope Francis looked at her and said gently: “Rise up. Each of you will serve the Creator of the world, and will protect and preserve the people and religion from which she came, and bring them closer – even and especially in the dark abyss of radicalization.”

He asked each one of us to rise up. Each and every one of us came to serve the Creator of the world who created man in His image, each of us came to protect and preserve the sanctity of life, the people and religion from which we came, and to bring us closer even in the dark abyss of radicalization and especially now.

With Pope Francis’s passing, I hear many Jews describing him as an “Israel hater.” No, he was not an Israel hater. He was not a hater at all. On the contrary, he was a leader who contributed greatly to the stand against Israel hatred in leadership, writing, and actions (though these were not free from human flaws). He grieved over the October 7th massacre, with all its horrors, and on the anniversary of the massacre, he established a day of remembrance, prayer, and fasting for the Catholic world. He met with families of hostages. And his enlightened envoy, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa, now mentioned as one of the candidates to be elected as the next Pope, volunteered to exchange himself for the hostages in order to secure their return. In Pope Francis’s last public sermon, when his health barely allowed him to breathe and he had to measure every word sevenfold, he spoke against the world’s renewed wave of antisemitism.

I write these words as our beloved land burns from fires. And it seems that society too is burning. And the world with it. I write this in these days between Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Haatzmaut, and Yom Yerushalayim. I write as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, as a bereaved sister, as a daughter of Jerusalem who believes we returned to Zion to protect the sanctity of life and live with courage, faith, and humility.

Let us rise up. The Jewish brother who has suffered. Israeli society with all its many diverse parts and pains. The whole hurting human brotherhood of faith that still deeply believes in God and in ourselves. Let us protect this burning world in the dark abyss of radicalization, return our kidnapped brothers, end the days of suffering that Hamas brought upon all, and, with God’s help and mercy, create together a language of faith holiness and responsibility, and days of healing and revival to all.