25 November. Anniversary of Angelo Roncalli’s birth
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on 25 November 1881 in Sotto il Monte, a small country village in the Bergamo province of the Lombardy region of Italy. He was the eldest son of Giovanni Battista Roncalli and his wife Marianna Giulia Mazzolla, and fourth in a family of 13. Under the papal name of John XXIII he was the head of the Roman Catholic Church between 1958 and 1963.
On 2014 he was canonized by the incumbent Pope Francis. Quite remarkable is that the fact that Pope Francis happens to be one of the very first members of the Wallenberg Foundation, which he joined at the time he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
We strongly believe that Roncalli deserves our special attention for his unique legacy and for his special relationship to the Jewish people.
In the dark years of the Shoah, as the Apostolic delegate in Istanbul, Roncalli went out of his way to save as many Jews as possible. His door was always open to the emissaries of Jewish Palestine (Chaim Barlas was his main interlocutor) and he interceded before King Boris of Bulgaria and the Slovakian leadership in favor of the Jews of those countries. He also allowed the use of the Vatican diplomatic courier to convey vital immigration documents provided by the Jewish Agency to his colleague, the Nuncio in Budapest, Monsignor Angelo Rotta, for further distribution to the beleaguered Jewish community in the Hungarian capital.
Back in 2011, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation submitted a massive file (the Roncalli Dossier) to Yad Vashem, with a strong petition and recommendation to bestow upon him the title of Righteous among the Nations.
After the war, as Nuncio in Paris, Roncalli played an interested role in relation to the establishment of the Jewish state.
Roncalli’s courage and humanism continued during his papacy. In 1961, he commissioned the drafting of the revolutionary Decretum de Judaeis (“Decree on the Jews”) which served as a basis to Nostra Aetate (Our Age), a declaration of the relation of the Church with non-Christian religions, which was promulgated in 1965 by his successor, Pope Paul VI, after Roncalli’s death.
The Decree on the Jews is a complex document but among other considerations, it stipulates that Jews who lived during Jesus’s era, let alone future generations of Jews, cannot be blamed for his death. In addition, Pope John XXIII instructed that an offensive remark about Jews (who were portrayed as “perfidious”) be erased from the Good Friday prayer.
For many years now, our Foundation has been working relentlessly to honor Roncalli and to spread his magnificent legacy. We promoted the naming of streets, schools and a kindergarten after him, the erection of busts and monuments, the creation of educational programs and so forth.
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was a remarkable human being – a role model for the young generations; a noble and modest man who taught us the meaning of love and fraternity.
Eduardo Eurnekian is the Chairman of The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, Baruch Tenembaum its founder.
VIDEO. John XXIII. “There wasn t a better Pope for the Jewish People in all history”
The Roncalli Dossier. A documented research and petition officially submitted to Yad Vashem on February 1st., 2011, with a request and recommendation to bestow upon Angelo Roncalli the title of “Righteous among the Nations”
https://www.raoulwallenberg.net/especial/roncalliyadvashem/roncalli02.html
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