The Pope’s words at the audience are "music to the ears" of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic communities living in Israel. "By recognising the inseparable relationship between Christianity and Hebraism stated to SIR father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Custodian of the Holy Land, who has witnessed these facts for a long time the Pontiff insisted that there is a unique, privileged relationship between Christianity and Hebraism. One cannot think of Christianity without Hebraism. Our roots are there". "For many centuries he added the announcement to the non-Jewish, the so-called Gentiles, has always been presented as a replacement of the announcement to the Jewish. But this is not the case. What is happening in Israel, in the tiny Hebrew-speaking Catholic communities, is exactly what happened at the time of James the Less, to which Benedict XVI devoted today’s catechesis. The questions are the same: do we have to abide by the Hebrew law or not? And how? Why?". "I hope the Pope’s words he concluded can revive the path of faith of these communities that are new and need time as well as suffering". The Hebrew-speaking Catholic communities (Beersheva, Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv) belong to the Apostolate of Saint James the Apostle, now known as the Jewish-Catholic Vicariate. Approved on February 11th 1955 by the then Latin patriarch Alberto Gori, it was born in response to the needs of the Hebrew-speaking Catholics. Its purposes are two: to create centres for Catholic Jews where the liturgy is celebrated in Hebrew and to reconcile Jews and Christians.
