Pope: Fight anti-semitism with education and respect for all

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday met with a delegation from the Anti-Defamation League encouraging them to cultivate justice and foster accord and telling them “the fight against anti-Semitism can benefit from effective instruments, such as information and formation.” 

Listen to Lydia O’Kane's report 

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” and on Thursday just like his predecessors, Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Pope Francis received a delegation from the organization, which has maintained relations with the Holy See since the Second Vatican Council. 

Speaking to those gathered the Pope recalled his visit last year to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp saying, “there are no adequate words or thoughts in the face of such horrors of cruelty and sin; there is prayer, that God may have mercy and that such tragedies may never happen again.”

Denouncing anti-Semitism, in all its forms, the Holy Father reaffirmed that “the Catholic Church feels particularly obliged to do all that is possible with our Jewish friends to repel anti-Semitic tendencies”.

Today more than ever, Pope Francis continued, “the fight against anti-Semitism can benefit from effective instruments, such as information and formation.” 

Faced with too much violence spreading throughout the world, the Pope underlined, “we are called to a greater nonviolence, which does not mean passivity, but active promotion of the good”, which he added, included the dignity of human life from conception to natural end.

The Holy Father encouraged the delegation sow the seeds of goodness by cultivating justice, fostering accord, and sustaining integration. Only in this way, he said, “may we gather the fruits of peace.”