Yes to dialogue and no to anti-semitism: that is the crux of the joint message of Jews and Christians issued to mark the 40th Anniversary of “Nostra Aetate”. Exponents of the two faiths met in the seat of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference on 28 October to commemorate Vatican Council II’s declaration on non-Christian religions. The bishop of Almería Adolfo González Montes, who heads the episcopal Commission for inter-confessional relations, said that “the Church regrets the misunderstandings of the past and the suffering unjustly inflicted on the Jewish people and “deplores the hatred and the manifestations of anti-semitism. Bishop González Montes, an expert in ecumenism, expressed a “special memory for the Sephardic Jews” and urged “a new future of mutual understanding” between the two faiths. For his part, Jacobo Israel Garzón, president of the Federation of the Jewish Community of Spain, recalled that the document “Nostra Aetate” had important repercussions in Spain” and stirred “the consciences of many Spaniards who believed that theirs was a just world in spite of its exclusion of others”. Israel Garzón emphasized that the only way forward is that of “mutual understanding”.
