From this a great respect and love for the Jewish people is born,” said the 120 rabbis of all Jewish denominations in a joint statement. “We were impressed by how, in the Neocatechumenal Way, faith is been transmitted to the children, by how families are rebuilt and by how people come to know the Scriptures and the roots Christianity: the faith of Abraham, the passage of the Red Sea, the Exodus, the history of salvation. Influenced by monastic and Jewish study practices, Domus Galilaeae houses a sacred text library whose focal point is a kosher Torah scroll. (Not surprisingly, Israeli Minister of Tourism Uzi Landau also spoke at the conference.) There are several Neocatechumenal Way congregations throughout Israel and each year thousands of lay adherents from around the globe make pilgrimages to the Holy Land to mark their group’s “graduation” from a decade-long committed spiritual journey together. Seminarians at its 100 institutions learn Hebrew, and include its use in prayer or song.

The Catholic stream emphasizes a return to the Jewish roots of the early Church in its practices. Influenced by monastic and Jewish study practices, it houses a sacred text library whose focal point is a kosher Torah scroll.Īlthough the center has seen 100,000 Jewish visitors, for many of the conference’s rabbis this meeting was their first experience with the Neocatechumenal Way. The immense guesthouse and learning center was funded - and built - by volunteers who took up hammers and nails alongside the priests and seminarians who live there. For the three-day early May conference, Pope Francis sent a personal message to be read to the seven cardinals, 20 bishops, Israeli politicians, and dozens of renowned artists and educators of both faiths who formed the 400 in attendance.Īlthough the challenges addressed by the Nostra Aetate declaration 50 years ago are still felt in an increasingly anti-Semitic European climate, rabbis there noted the “dramatic change” the declaration has had on Jewish-Catholic relations.ĭomus Galilaeae was tasked by Pope John Paul II to be “a center for initiatives aimed at establishing a more fruitful dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish World” at its inauguration during a 2000 papal visit.

Located at the Domus Galilaeae, the aesthetically stunning Israeli headquarters for a million evangelicals belonging to a global Catholic stream called the Neocatechumenal Way, the meeting was formally supported by the Vatican as a tool for fostering interfaith fraternity.

However, these rabbis were the religious minority at the interfaith conference marking five decades to the historic Catholic “ Nostra Aetate declaration,” which formally rejected the Jewish people’s blame for Jesus’s death. Hundreds of faithful gathered last week on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to recite a foundational Jewish prayer, the “Shema Yisrael.” Among those attesting to the one God of Israel were some 120 leading international rabbis.

Domus galilae