AJC – “Inside Vatican Diplomacy: Antisemitism, Israel, and the Middle East”

After witnessing the absolute evil of the Shoah, the Vatican initiated a total turnabout and rebirth of relations with Jews and Judaism in the 1960s. AJC, an active partner in this accelerated process of reconciliation was the first American Jewish organization to have been granted a papal audience in the post Vatican II era, and continues to enjoy private papal audiences. Today, new heights of cooperation and solidarity based on common values have been reached. In order to discuss Vatican’s relations with Israel, the call to cooperative action by the two States to quell the recent surge of antisemitism, and Vatican’s relations with the Arab and Islamic world, its diplomatic strategies for achieving a global future of peace with a special focus on the Middle East, Vatican’s Secretary of Relations between States (its “Foreign Minister”), Archbishop Paul Gallagher has graciously accepted to engage in an unprecedented public conversation with Rabbi David Rosen, AJC’s International Director for Interreligious Affairs.