Exclusive AJC eBook - The Pope Francis Effect and Catholic-Jewish Relations
In evaluating the trajectory of Catholic-Jewish Relations in the Pope Francis era, one picture is worth a
thousand words. Pope Francis has identified Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion as one of his favorite paintings.2 In the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938, when hundreds of European synagogues were torched, foreshadowing greater evil yet to come, Chagall artistically interpreted the threat of Nazism within the continuum of antisemitism.