Angelo Roncalli’s Attitude towards Zionism and Israel during the Forties

It isn’t simple to write about the Roncalli’s attitude towards the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In fact there are two different aspects that are very difficult to take in to consideration at the same moment: on one hand he was the Pope of the opening toward the Jewish world (the first Pope that openly refused any anti-Hebrew traditions); on the other he had served for long years as a Vatican diplomat, a position that obliged him to uniform his views to the political action of the Holy See. In the impossibility to clearly define a coherent Roncalli’s thought regarding the Palestinian question and the Zionistic movement, I want to stress some points that influenced his position towards the Zionistic goals and the establishment of the State of Israel: • Roncalli not only knew quite well the Middle East, but also loved it. This aspect is evident from all his papers. He lived long years in countries where Catholics were a minority (1925-1945) and during this important period of his life he developed a significant attention for the other Christian confessions and for the non-Christian religions. • He was well informed on the Palestinian situations, through his close friend Gustavo Testa who served twice as apostolic delegate in Jerusalem. • As it is well known, during the Second World War, he played an important role helping the persecuted Jews. An attitude that characterized him as one of the Vatican diplomats most involved in this kind of operation. Despite this, when it was possible to send many persecuted Jews from Europe to Palestine, Roncalli expressed his scepticism on the feasibility of this action, because he was worried by the increasing Jewish presence in Palestine. • While he was nuncio to Paris (1945-1952), he met many Israeli diplomats, but also many Arab leaders, and in particular some Greek-Catholic prelates, who were visiting France to mobilize the European public opinion against the Jewish State. With all of them, he never took any political stand. Despite this, in his notes he showed his disapproval for any political involvement of the Catholic clergy, using quite strong expression to context the idea of a Crusade in defence of Arab Palestine in which Christians and Muslims could be united against the Zionistic goal. • During the Catholic mobilization in favour of the internationalization of Jerusalem in 1949, Roncalli backed the Vatican claims regarding the creation of a corpus separatus for the Holy City and for its neighbourhood. This position didn’t signify a hostile attitude toward Israel, but only the fidelity to the Holy See’s political line: a behaviour quite normal in a Vatican diplomat. • Having become Pope, Roncalli didn’t establish formal and direct diplomatic relations with Israel (such an event happened only in 1993). In any case, during his short pontificate, he gave some signals of attention and respect for the young State Provisory Conclusions The role of Roncalli in the building of the relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel wasn’t so important as his role in the development of the Christian-Jewish dialogue. Despite this, there are many elements that show how in the Vatican elites Roncalli was one of the most pro-Israeli diplomats. On this point, it is significant to notice the quantity and quality of the contacts between the papal nuncio and the Israeli agents in Paris and also the short notes, full of confidence and sympathy, that Roncalli wrote on these meetings. It is quite evident that he never approved the most anti-Israeli positions developed in some circles of the Secretariat of State and in some specific Catholic institutions such as, for example, the Franciscan Custody of Holy Land.