In September 2022, I traveled to Oberammergau, Germany, to attend the village’s world-famous, once-a-decade Passion play. I’m working on a book about how local communities reinterpret the Stations of the Cross to claim divine solidarity in the face of injustice, a project that has led me to Passion rituals of many kinds. Last Good Friday, students invited me to join an ecumenical Atlanta congregation composed predominantly of people living on the street as they carried a cross down a gentrified stretch of busy Ponce de Leon Avenue to lament the racialized displacement wrought by recent urban redevelopment. The next day, a community in Atlanta’s Peoplestown neighborhood memorialized Jesus’ Crucifixion beside the burned-out Wendy’s parking lot where police officers killed Rayshard Brooks in 2020. I’ve become captivated by the question of what it is about the Stations of the Cross—this quintessentially traditional, medieval devotion and its fourteen-station template—that makes it such a rich site of theological agency for communities on the margins.
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This year marks the 25th anniversary of We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, issued on 16 March 1998 by the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
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Every religion has its demonology. When Malcolm X made this observation to Alex Haley as they collaborated on what was to become his posthumous autobiography, his immediate target was the antisemitic teaching promoted by Elijah Muhammed, from whose sect he had recently broken. His refusal to exempt any faith from the tendency to demonize others in order to validate itself remains as painfully relevant today as it was in 1965.
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Accepting the document, Pope Francis denounced surging anti-Semitism and stressed the importance of “recalling history so it can be of service to the future.”

A 30-member Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) international delegation met with Pope Francis on Wednesday to present a facsimile of an original report authored and signed by Adolf Hitler in which he openly espouses the destruction of the Jewish people by “a government of national strength.”

The facsimile, whose original is displayed at the SWC’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, was presented to His Holiness by SWC founder and CEO Rabbi Marvin Hier and Dawn Arnall, chairwoman of the leading NGO for Jewish human rights.

In Rabbi Hier’s remarks to Pope Francis, the Jewish leader first enumerated the horrific statistics on both sides of the Atlantic, which confirm surging anti-Semitism, including violent hate crimes.

In Pope Francis’ remarks, he responded by thanking the Simon Wiesenthal Center for protecting the memory of the past. Rabbi Hier then spoke about the human rights organization’s namesake, Holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, and how he would react to current events.
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Dani Dayan, head of the Holocaust center in Jerusalem, describes Pope Francis as a friend and an ally in the mission to defeat antisemitism. Pope Francis met with the chairman of the Yad Vashem (World Holocaust Remembrance Center) and the two discussed ways to prevent antisemitism and increase cooperation on Holocaust education. Dani Dayan, the head of the center in Jerusalem, described Pope Francis as a friend and an ally in the mission to defeat antisemitism. Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, is universally recognized as the ultimate source for Holocaust education, documentation and research.

The meeting that took place on June 9 was also attended by Rafi Schutz, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See. Pope Francis and Dayan both share Buenos Aires as their birthplace and were able to converse in their native Spanish. The discussion focused on ongoing collaborative efforts by Yad Vashem and the Catholic Church on “Holocaust remembrance, education and documentation, and to discuss efforts to fight antisemitism and racism worldwide,” Yad Vashem said in a statement.
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A special service to mark the eighth centenary anniversary of the Synod of Oxford aims to encourage Christians to reject contemporary forms of anti-Judaism and antisemitism. The Church of England has issued an apology to the Jewish community over laws that were passed 800 years ago which paved the way for the expulsion of Jews from England for hundreds of years. A special service held on Sunday at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford for the eighth centenary anniversary of the Synod of Oxford saw the presence of civic dignitaries and religious leaders, including Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis and representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. The 1222 Synod of Oxford passed laws that forbade social interactions between Jews and Christians, placed a specific tithe on Jews and required them to wear an identifying badge. The Jews were also banned from some professions and from building new synagogues. Other harsher restrictions against the Jews followed over the years that eventually led to the mass expulsion of approximately 3,000 Jews at the time, by an edict in 1290 by King Edward I. More than 360 years passed before Jews were readmitted to England by Oliver Cromwell in 1656.
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The Anti-Defamation League commends the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ) for its comprehensive statement about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which calls on religious institutions and groups to refrain from issuing one-sided declarations in attempting to promote a resolution to the dispute.

The statement by ICCJ, one of the world’s oldest and most respected international Christian-Jewish organizations, urges religious bodies and leaders to recommit themselves to promote understanding and reconciliation, and pursue the hard work of authentic interfaith dialogue.
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The Catholic Church’s relationship to Judaism as taught by the Second Vatican Council and the interpretations and developments of that teaching by subsequent popes, “are binding on a Catholic,” said the Vatican official responsible for relations with the Jews. Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke to reporters May 16 after delivering a speech on Catholic-Jewish relations in light of Vatican II’s declaration “Nostra Aetate” on the church’s relations with non-Christian religions. The afternoon speech followed Cardinal Koch’s participation in a meeting of the doctrinal congregation to examine the latest progress in the Vatican’s reconciliation talks with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X.

“There are questions to clarify in discussions with this community. I can’t say more than that,” he told reporters, echoing a Vatican statement saying the reconciliation talks are ongoing. In addition to the highly publicized position of Bishop Richard Williamson, an SSPX bishop who denies the Holocaust, public statements by the society’s superior general, Bishop Bernard Fellay, leave in doubt whether the society as a whole accepts the entirety of “Nostra Aetate,” including its condemnations of anti-Semitism and of the idea that the Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus.

“All the doctrinal decisions of the church are binding on a Catholic, including the Second Vatican Council and all its texts,” Cardinal Koch said when asked if the SSPX would be expected to accept all the teachings of Vatican II. “The ‘Nostra Aetate’ declaration of the Second Vatican Council is a clear decree and is important for every Catholic,” he added. At the same time, Cardinal Koch said, “it is very necessary to make clear the difference between the position of the Society of St. Pius X and the negation of the Shoah (the Holocaust), which is a position that has no place in the Catholic Church. It is very clear.”
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Une déclaration du Dialogue Judéo-Chrétien de Montréal Comme toute oeuvre d’art basée sur des faits historiques, le film de Mel Gibson La Passion du Christ peut créer l’illusion qu’il reproduit fidèlement le moindre détail de la passion de Jésus, avec toute sa toute cruauté et sa violence. Les spectateurs pourraient rester sous l’impression que tout
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A statement from the Christian-Jewish Dialogue in Montreal Like all art works based on historical events, Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ may create the illusion that it faithfully reproduces the details of Jesus’ Passion with its cruelty and violence. Viewers may be left with the impression that without the Jews, these things
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WCC News flash What should we do after seeing Mel Gibson’s film ‘The Passion of Christ’? That is the question being asked by Rev. Dr Hans Ucko, who specializes in Christian-Jewish dialogue at the World Council of Churches. He discusses the impact of our reactions to this controversial film in an opinion piece published in
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