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What We Jews Learned from Pope Francis  

By Shlomo Maital  

     Pope Francis died on Monday. He was 88.

     The Catholic Church has done the Jewish people considerable harm in the past.  But this Pope was different.

      As Cardinal of Buenos Aires, he daily took the bus to his headquarters.  A master of the meaningful gesture, he wanted to show his flock that he was one of them, not above them.  As New York Times Vatican correspondent Jason Horowitz (Jewish)  noted, Francis hated ‘clericalism’ above all – defined as “the formal, church-based dominant leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of the church”, or in other words, we the clergy are above you all.

       We Jews learned – or should have learned – a lot from Francis.  In Israel, our Ultra-Orthodox clerics, rabbis, cloistered in halls of study called ‘yeshivas’, instruct their students never to agree to do army service, as the law requires, even when our country is under attack and many reserve soldiers are serving for 200 or more days a year, ruining their businesses, away from their wives and children, and risking their lives.

       This is clericalism.  Religious leaders who do not live as Francis counseled among the people, listening to the people, empathic with them, feeling their pain and suffering. 

         Iran is led exclusively by an 85-year-old cleric.  It will not end well. 

        The rabbis of the Talmud all had trades – carpenters, shoemakers, bakers – because they had to, to earn a living.  They lived among the people and the 2,000 pages of the Talmud reflects this.  They ‘took the bus’, as did Francis.  (He used to drive around Rome  in a Ford Focus.  A meaningful gesture). 

         Today, the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis support an anti-democratic government, filch many many millions of shekels of taxpayer money to support their life of study, without jobs or army service, and now demand a law enabling them to legally evade what every other citizen must do, serve their country.

         We Jews can learn from Pope Francis.  In the Conclave of cardinals (only those under 80; if you’re over 80, you don’t get to vote), in 2013, Pope Francis like many other cardinals made a short speech.  As Jason Horowitz reports, you are not allowed to campaign for yourself in the Conclave – but you can give a speech about the priorities you think are vital for the Church, which is of course a campaign speech.  Francis spoke about getting the priests out of the cloistered churches and into the field, among the people, into the “periphery”,  as his speech became known.  It gained him the papacy.

           Let us hope and pray the Conclave Cardinals choose a worthy successor to Pope Francis – one who in spirit and in mindset is one of the people, not one of the autocratic clerics who live in splendor and have no idea how the vast majority of their flock lives.  The chances are good. Many of the current Cardinals were appointed by him and share his world view.