Page 30 - October 7 - Teresa Pirola

consider it to be their priority to speak out in solidarity with Jewish communities, nor publicly to stand with Israelis as they mourned their murdered fellow citizens. Did they not view it as significant enough? Were they (clergy and laity) too busy with the Synod of Bishops being held in Rome?
Just eight months earlier, on 22 March 2023, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference had signed a statement called ‘Walking Together: Catholics with Jews in the Australian Context’, in which they pledged their commitment to the teaching of Nostra Aetate and rejected antisemitism. Yet by October, as reports of Hamas’ crimes came to light, it appeared to be ‘business as usual’ for most episcopal diaries. Did they not understand this moment as a critical test of their leadership in the face of the rising tide of global antisemitism? ‘Palestinians plead for peace’ was the recurring message headlining one archdiocesan newspaper, with barely a mention of Hamas’ atrocities in its Sunday editions following the attacks. As the body count mounted in Israel, and then in Gaza, ‘all lives matter’ quickly became the catchcry in Catholic circles (and who can argue with that?). It seemed that Catholics couldn’t pause, even for one Sunday, to say ‘Jewish lives matter. Israeli lives matter’.
My heartfelt hope was that many private messages of condolence would have been delivered to Jewish friends, neighbours and communities by Catholics of all walks of life. And I am not suggesting that good people have been callously unconcerned. To be sure, many prayers would have been privately and publicly said for peace in the Holy Land. However, for all the work of interfaith relations over years and decades, the public face of the Catholic Church was largely missing in action at that precise moment when the Jewish community needed us most, and when ordinary Catholics
30