BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) – Pope Francis honored victims of Slovak Slovak Holocaust and atoned for Christian complicity in war crimes while trying to promote reconciliation on Monday in a country where a Catholic priest was president of a Nazi puppet state which deported tens of thousands of Jews.
“Your story is our story, your sufferings are our sufferings,” Francis told members of the small remaining Jewish community in Slovakia, in the shadow of the country’s Holocaust memorial.
Although St. John Paul II made three trips to Slovakia, he never met here with the country’s Jews, evidence of the strained local Catholic-Jewish relations that endured during the postwar decades even with a pope. Polish known for its spread to the Jews. .
As a result, the welcome of Francis by the community – during the solemn ten-day period of repentance that extended from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur – was a significant step forward and was hailed as historic by Jewish leaders. locals who said the future was an opportunity.
Francis is on the second day of a four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia, his first major international outing since undergoing bowel surgery in July. The 84-year-old pope has appeared in good shape, strolling to greet those desired and clearly enjoying the enthusiasm of Slovaks after being locked in the Vatican for more than a year of coronavirus blockages.
He was solemn on Monday afternoon, listening intently through headphones providing simultaneous translation while listening to a Holocaust survivor about the horrors of the Holocaust and the enduring pain of the Jewish community.
“Let us unite to condemn all violence and all forms of anti-Semitism and to work to ensure that the image of God, present in the humanity he created, will never be desecrated,” Francis said.
Slovakia declared its independence from Czechoslovakia in 1939 and became a Nazi puppet state, with Catholic politician and priest Jozef Tiso becoming the country’s president.
Under his rule, the country adopted strict anti-Jewish laws and deported about 75,000 Jews to Nazi death camps where about 68,000 died.
Tiso was sentenced to death and hanged in 1947 and, over the years, scholars have unearthed files showing that Pope Pius XII’s Vatican did not approve of Tiso’s policies and intervened to stop the deportation of Slovak Jews in 1942, although they resumed two years later, after Nazi troops entered Slovakia at the request of Tiso.
Now, only about 5,000 Jews live in Slovakia, a 5.5 million largely Roman Catholic country currently ruled by a four-party center-right coalition government.
Over the years, the Catholic bishops of Slovakia expressed their regret for their failures during the war and apologized to the Jewish community, but only a process of official dialogue began after the Slovak representatives of both religions met with Francis at the Vatican in 2017.
Francisco praised that meeting as a key moment in the path of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation, which he said was necessary to “move forward, with truth and honesty, on the fraternal path of a purification of memory, to heal past wounds. and to remember the good received and offered “.
The head of the umbrella group of the Slovak Jewish communities, Richard Duda, said at the meeting that Francis’ visit was “historic” and that it was a “turning point” in relations, and that dialogue was the the only way to achieve peaceful coexistence.
“We hope that the sincerity and availability of an open dialogue will allow us to put an end even to the dark sides of the complicity that, during the terrible world war of 80 years ago, marked the relations between the people of this land, “he said.
Although Francis’ visit marked a new step in Jewish-Catholic relations, it also served to remind Slovaks that Catholics also saved lives.
A Holocaust survivor, Tomas Lang, cited a Vatican embassy official at the time, Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, as someone who “constantly tried to stop the anti-Semitism of the murderous regime of the time.” .
And a Slovak nun Orsoline, Sister Samuela, told Francis about the various occasions of Jewish children and their families hiding in Slovak convents and even at the Vatican embassy itself.
Overall, in 2019, 580 Slovaks were awarded as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem.
The site of Francis’ meeting was significant: the Bratislava Holocaust Memorial is located on the site of a synagogue that the communist regime destroyed in 1969 to make way for a bridge. The synagogue had been located next to the city’s cathedral and Francis said its proximity showed that Catholics and Jews had lived for a long time in peaceful coexistence ”and a striking sign of unity in the name of the God of our fathers. “
“Here, in this place, the name of God was dishonored, because the worst form of blasphemy is to exploit it for our own purposes, refusing to respect and love others,” he said.
“In this place, our stories meet again. Here we affirm together before God our will to persevere in the path of rapprochement and friendship “, said Francis.
Last week, the Slovak government formally apologized for racial laws that removed Jews from their human and civil rights, prevented their access to education, and authorized the transfer of their properties to non-Jewish owners. The government took action on the 80th anniversary of the “Jewish Code”, considered one of the harshest anti-Jewish laws passed in Europe during the war.
Lucia Hidveghyova, Slovak’s leading expert on Jewish-Catholic relations, described Francesc’s meeting with the Jewish community as “very important” and the result of the improvement in relations that gained strong momentum after the 2017 Vatican meeting, which led to the formation of joint committees. .
“It is true that in the last five years, the dialogue between them at the official level has advanced more than in the previous 50 years,” he said in a telephone interview.
“I think (coming) wants to further encourage dialogue,” he said.
Maros Borsky, secretary of the dialogue commission between the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities and the Catholic Church, said the pope’s visit could only help improve relations in the future.
“What happened in the past can’t be fixed, but we need to look to the future,” Borsky told The Associated Press.
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Karel Janicek reported from Prague.