The head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has drawn the ire of the world’s most prominent rabbis, signaling a level of tension with the Jewish community that has not been seen since the days of Pope Pius XII and the aftermath of the Holocaust.

At issue is a reported phone call last month between His Holiness and Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, during which the pope told Mr. Herzog that it is “forbidden to respond to terror with terror,” the Washington Post reported, citing an Israeli official. This was taken as a blunt rebuke over Israel’s ongoing campaign against Hamas in Gaza. 

The pope echoed this theme in subsequent remarks after reports emerged of the deaths of two Christian women near a Gaza church complex. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem had blamed the Israel Defense Forces for their deaths, but the Israeli military conducted a review of the incident and denied that it was responsible. The IDF made note of Hamas fire nearby at the time. 

At his weekly blessing, the pope referenced the incident and placed the blame squarely with the Jewish state. “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism,” he said.

In response, Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, and his counterpart in South Africa, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, issued lengthy rebukes. There is no equivalent to the position of pope in Judaism; the chief rabbis representing major Jewish communities are among the most prominent leaders of the Jewish faith. 

Describing the pope’s comments as “incorrect and even outrageous” in a letter in Hebrew dated December 20, Rabbi Lau requested that the leader of the Catholic Church “change your description of what occurred.” 

Rabbi Goldstein went further. In a video posted on his YouTube channel, the rabbi charged the pope with repeating the sins of Pope Pius XII, “from the Nazi era,” by “comparing Israel’s just war of self-defense to the barbarism of Hamas,” and thereby “surreptitiously supporting the forces of evil who seek to annihilate the Jewish people.”  

Rabbi Goldstein described the pope’s attitude toward Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “philosophy of primitive pacifism.” He said God had given the pope “an historic opportunity to atone for the sins of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church, during the Holocaust.”

Pope Pius XII, whose reign at the Vatican covered the World War II era and the Holocaust, is reviled by members of the Jewish community for maintaining the church’s neutrality and doing precious little to oppose the decimation of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis. 

Ironically, it was Pope Francis who last year ordered the release of some 2,700 files from the era of the wartime pope. A letter that was uncovered earlier this year implied that the Vatican knew of Hitler’s atrocities and yet chose to remain silent. 

In response to a query from the Washington Post, the Vatican declined to clarify the pope’s comments on Gaza further, as did a spokesman for Mr. Herzog’s office.

The Catholic Church in South Africa, represented by the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference, issued a pugnacious defense of the pope. In a signed open letter, the president of the conference, Bishop Sithembele Sipuka, accused Rabbi Goldstein of “mistrust and character assassination.”

Going further than the Pope in his criticism of Israel, the Bishop also declared that “what is happening now in Gaza is not a just war.”

Explaining what was behind his decision to confront the pope, Rabbi Goldstein tells the Sun that it was inspired by his view that “the greatest threat to global security and the greatest threat to the security and safety of the state of Israel is the lack of moral clarity in the world.” 

Other chief rabbis were less forthright in their approaches. A spokesman for Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the Commonwealth, Mark Frazer, tells the Sun that  Rabbi Mirvis’s “first reaction to something would not necessarily be in public.” The chief rabbi of France, Rabbi Haim Korsia, did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment. 

Rabbi Goldstein, for one, says that he’s found the response he’s received from his remarks to be “heartwarming.” 

“I think there is a lot of understanding about what is at stake,” he says. “I’ve received a lot of encouragement and support from colleagues, from Jews in South Africa, globally, and in Israel, but also from different parts of the Christian community here in South Africa and more widely.”