By Mark D. Zimmerman
MELVILLE, New York — Pope Francis died last week at the age of 88, after serving as the leader of the Catholic Church for 12 years. He was the first Jesuit to serve as Pope, and the first Pope who was born in the Americas.
Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and he became a priest, eventually being named the Archbishop. He was an advocate of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and he signed the Vatican’s first treaty with Palestine. He visited Israel in 2014, where he was the first Pope to visit the gravesite of Theodor Herzl, while also visiting Yad Vashem and the Western Wall.
More recently, Pope Francis condemned the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, while also criticizing Israel for its actions in the subsequent Gaza War. While serving as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio developed a close relationship with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a prominent leader in the local Jewish community. The two clerics held a series of inter-religious talks on such topics as God, atheists, homosexuality, and capitalism. What was the circumstance that led Archbishop Bergoglio to say to Rabbi Skorka, “I guess this year we are going to eat chicken soup.”?
A. In 1996, Rabbi Skorka attended an Easter celebration at the home of Archbishop Bergoglio. The next year, the Rabbi invited the Archbishop to attend the Passover seder at his home, leading to Bergoglio’s remarks.
B. Archbishop Bergoglio ended up in the hospital during Lent in 1995 because of a respiratory infection. Rabbi Skorka paid him a visit there, where he noted that “our people have the perfect cure for your ailment, chicken soup.” The archbishop replied jokingly that, “though it is Lent, I guess this year we are going to eat chicken soup.”
C. The two clerics were attending the annual Buenos Aires Clergy Council dinner. While the menu usually includes locro, the traditional Argentinian stew which includes veal, pork and chorizo, that year’s dinner took place at the rabbi’s Benei Tikva Synagogue, with a kosher menu.
D. As part of the annual Buenos Aires Carnival Street Fair celebration, the Clerical Council of Argentina sponsored an event where different faith groups would cook their favorite recipes to sell as a charity fundraiser. The Archbishop made that comment when he came upon Rabbi Skorka at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Jewish Community Center) table.
E. The Archbishop was a fan of the championship San Lorenzo soccer team and the Rabbi was a fan of the lowly River Plate team, whose fans were known as “gallinas,” which means chickens, leading to the Archbishop’s remarks in a soccer discussion with the Rabbi.
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Link to answer: https://rrrjewishtrivia.com/pope-francis-rip-answer.html
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Mark D. Zimmerman is an author and columnist based in Melville, New York.
In 2024, the picture of the frail and wheelchair-bound Pope unveiling a nativity scene at the Vatican should have been completely uncontroversial. It was December after all and Christians across the globe were gearing up to celebrate the birth of the founder of their faith.
Not this time. The baby in the crib the pope found so moving, was positioned lying on top of a Palestinian keffiyeh.
The Church has struggled long and hard to launder the stain of antisemitism and accommodation of Hitler by Pope Pius XII during World War II. As John Cornwell’s definitive work on the subject, Hitler’s Pope makes clear; they failed. From a rapprochement of sorts between the Vatican and the Jewish people, which took place in the 60s, the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries has seen a gradual but sustained erosion of that rapprochement.
When the State of Israel and the Jewish people are facing a 1930s re-run across the globe, to offer this inexcusable insult to the Jewish nation marks a tipping point and a huge and clear shift in the Church’s position.