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On October 8, the day after the massacre, while we were still gathering our dead and fighting to liberate our communities from Hamas terrorists, and while the victims' blood was still wet as horrifying videos – proudly shared by the attackers – spread across social media, Pope Francis stepped to the window of his Apostolic Palace office to deliver his Sunday sermon to thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square.
The first part of the sermon was religious in nature. The second part addressed current events:
"I follow with concern and sorrow what is happening in Israel, where violence has exploded with ferocity and has caused hundreds of deaths and injuries. I express my closeness to the families of the victims, and I pray for them and for all those experiencing hours of terror and anguish. Please stop the attacks and the weapons, and understand that terrorism and war do not bring any solution, but only the death and suffering of many innocent people. War is a defeat – every war is a defeat! Let us pray for peace in Israel and in Palestine!"
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That was it. At that moment, Israel was gripped by existential fear of a multi-front invasion, and projections spoke of tens of thousands of dead in the Israeli population. The military and government were still trying to comprehend the scope of the attack, and our enemies believed they could bring us down. They began a campaign of genocide in the name of a god they had long claimed to worship. For a terrifying moment, it seemed they might succeed. The state that the Jewish people had established just 75 years earlier was facing a monumental threat.
But for the Pope, violence had simply "exploded," as if from nowhere, causing casualties. Who were the perpetrators? What had they done? His words gave no clue. What could he do? Pray for "those experiencing terror and anguish." Who were they, aliens from outer space? The conclusion was clear: "in Israel and in Palestine." Both sides are equal; both are suffering, in his words: terror (from Gaza) and war (from Israel). As the war escalated, it became clear that for Pope Francis, terror wasn't Gazan, Palestinian, or Hamas, it was Israeli.
He emphasized twice: "War is a defeat." Really? Was the Allied war against Nazi Germany unnecessary? Perhaps this is how Pope Pius XII felt, his silence during the Holocaust echoing in Francis' sermon. The best he could muster was "stop the attacks." Remarkable. As my late mother would say with biting sarcasm: hand out sweets and chocolates to the enemy. That'll help.
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A senior diplomat told me this week that the pope's usual practice is to offer only a few words when addressing world events. If only that had remained true. As the war progressed and Israel destroyed its enemies, Jorge Mario Bergoglio increasingly launched poisonous barbs at Israel and denied its right to eliminate those enemies. Not just its right to self-defense, mind you, he objected to its right to victory. He accused Israel of genocide and our soldiers of mowing down children with machine guns. Almost at every opportunity, his words and insinuations cast Israel as the aggressor and its soldiers as monsters, standing against the poor people of Gaza.
But that's the easy part to criticize. It's the first part of the sermon that demands closer attention. This is Pope Francis for advanced readers. Seemingly, it was a religious sermon about virtues and the power of words to change the world. Gratitude. Forgiveness. Permission. Not quite. The heart of the sermon was a parable of Jesus that appears in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Francis began:
"Today the Gospel presents us with a dramatic parable, with a sad ending. A landowner planted a vineyard and cared for it. Then, needing to travel, he entrusted it to tenant farmers. When harvest time came, he sent his servants to collect the fruit. But the tenants beat and killed them. Then the landowner sent his son, and they killed him too. Why? What went wrong? There is a message from Jesus in this parable."
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So, what was the cause of the tenants' treachery? According to the pope, it was ingratitude and greed that crept into their minds.
"At the root of every conflict, there is always a lack of gratitude and greedy thoughts of seizing things quickly," he said. "The tenants should have been thankful for their role and the trust they were given. Instead, ingratitude fed their greed, which gave rise to rebellion. They saw reality in a twisted way, as if the landowner who gave them work owed them something. When they saw his son, they said: 'Here is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' And so, they went from being farmers to becoming murderers. It's a process."
And not just in the parable, but in our time as well: "Yes, dear brothers and sisters, ingratitude leads to violence and banishes peace."
In other words, the tenants who failed to tend the vineyard didn't thank God for the messenger sent to redeem them. Due to their ingratitude and greed, they murdered him, and their descendants were drawn into a spiral of violence that drove out peace. They went from being tenants to killers. And all this was delivered in gentle language and coded theological hints, for those in the know. Only after this sermon did the pope address the events in Israel. That's the deeper theological and political context. From here, his sermons only escalated: the tenants eventually committed genocide.
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Of all Jesus' parables, the pope chose this one the day after a massacre of Jews. Take note of how he introduced it: it has a "sad ending", no coincidence. The parable Jesus told the priests and Pharisees mirrors a passage from the prophet Isaiah (chapter 5, "My beloved had a vineyard"). In both stories, the vineyard symbolizes the people of Israel. In Isaiah's telling, despite the owner's devoted care, the vineyard yields rotten grapes, a metaphor for the sins of the people of Judah. In Jesus' version, the vineyard's caretakers – he spiritual (and actually the political) leadership of the Jewish people – kill God's messengers and eventually His son.
Did Jesus mean to hint at his own impending death? Possibly. But Catholic interpretation has a clear takeaway: the Jews rejected God's messengers and murdered His son. And the punishment?
"When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time… Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit."
You see, the Jews failed in their divine duty and mission, did not tend the vineyard, and murdered God's son. As a result, God revoked His covenant with them and bestowed it upon others, the Church. This is the infamous replacement theology.
One of the early Church Fathers, Justin Martyr, wrote in the second century in his Dialogue with Trypho: "For we [Christians] are the true spiritual Israel… We shall inherit the Holy Land together with Abraham and possess our inheritance forever… but not with you [the Jews], for you are not trustworthy." This is just one example of the Church's long history. Now do you understand why the establishment of the State of Israel was a theological scandal for the Catholic Church?
