Jean-Paul II et les Juifs

Catholicism has long been hostile towards Jews. It has even been claimed that its anti-Judaism was the matrix of twentieth-century anti-Semitism. This contribution sets out to show that the pontificate of John Paul II marks a break in the history of the Church in this respect. A relative break perhaps: the Polish Pope is following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, one of whose major texts, the declaration Nostra aetate (1965), revokes the idea of the Jewish people's guilt in Christ's death sentence and accepts that the Jews are still part of the Alliance with God. However, there was one decisive break: influenced by his education between the wars, which brought him into contact with nineteenth-century literature favourable to an inclusive nationalism, he accentuated the “philo-Judaism” of the conciliar period by developing a new approach to the Jewish community, linking recognition of the State of Israel with a request for forgiveness for the sins of Christians addressed to the “Jewish People”.