✡️ Jerusalem Post: "The Pope must denounce Nick Fuentes and Candance Owens for sinful antisemitism"

Pope Leo XIV must state clearly and publicly – by name – that Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens do not represent Catholic teaching or Catholic values and that their antisemitism is sinful and dangerous.

But there is a deeper reason the Vatican must speak now, one that extends far beyond Fuentes and Owens themselves. After all, for 1,900 years the Catholic Church was one of the principal architects, promoters, and purveyors of antisemitism in the Western world.

From Church fathers who accused Jews of deicide, to medieval blood libels, to forced conversions, ghettoization, the Inquisition, and centuries of discriminatory laws, Christian Europe’s hostility toward Jews was too often shaped, legitimized, or reinforced by Church teachings and clerical authority. Antisemitism did not emerge in a vacuum; the Church played a key role in its development.

It was not until the mid-20th century, after the horrors of the Holocaust laid bare where centuries of theological hostility could lead, that the Church undertook a fundamental re-examination of its relationship with the Jewish people.

THE RESULT was a declaration by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 known as Nostra Aetate, which stated that the Church “deplores all hatreds, persecutions, and displays of antisemitism directed against the Jews at any time or from any source.”

At any time or from any source. No exceptions. No qualifiers.

In effect, the Vatican pledged to uproot antisemitism wherever it appeared, especially within its own flock. But that pledge is now being tested.

Fuentes and Owens represent a direct and dangerous challenge to Vatican II. They undermine decades of attempts at reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. And they prey on young Catholics, offering them a vision that fuses religious identity with outright bigotry.

And the longer the Vatican remains silent, the more their poison spreads.

🔗 https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-874619