Chief rabbi Elio Toaff, right, welcomes Pope John Paul II to Rome’s Great Synagogue on April 13, 1986.
Elio Toaff, the chief rabbi of Rome for 50 years and a pivotal player in Christian-Jewish reconciliation after centuries of distrust, has died at the age of 99.
Mr. Toaff, who died Sunday, was Rome's chief rabbi in 1986 when Pope John Paul II made the first visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to a synagogue in nearly 2,000 years. It was during that visit to the Great Synagogue that John Paul made the now-famous remark calling Jews "our beloved elder brothers," marking a milestone in Catholic-Jewish relations.
Several years later, John Paul led the Vatican to diplomatic relations with Israel, and during a visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall in 2000 he asked for forgiveness for Catholics who persecuted Jews over the centuries.
Mr. Toaff used part of the Pope's phrase in the synagogue for the title of his autobiography, Perfidious Jews, Elder Brothers, which spoke of the revolutionary improvement in Catholic-Jewish relations.
The first part of the title came from a Good Friday prayer that Catholics recited for centuries until the 1960s, when the church officially repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.
In a 2001 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Toaff discussed his interfaith work and philosophy, saying: "A rabbi doesn't work only for his community or for the Jews. A rabbi has to talk to every human being who needs him. He belongs to everybody. He is for everybody."
"He dedicated his life to the cause of inter-religious dialogue," Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino said of Mr. Toaff, who retired as the city's chief rabbi in 2001.
In a message of condolences to the head of Rome's Jewish community, Pope Francis recalled the historic relationship that helped change Catholic-Jewish relations. "He was a protagonist of Jewish and Italian history in recent decades, able to conquer the esteem and appreciation of others through his moral authority and profound humanity," Francis wrote.
Speaking to a visiting Jewish delegation at the Vatican on Monday, Francis said: "We gratefully remember this man of peace and dialogue who received Pope John Paul II during his historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome."
Mr. Toaff`'s willingness to engage in interfaith dialogue made him a privileged partner in the Vatican's efforts to reach out to Jews and other religions, and he was one of only two living people mentioned in John Paul's will when the pontiff died in 2005 (the other was John Paul's personal secretary).
Elio Toaff was born on April 30, 1915, in the Tuscan city of Livorno, where his father was the chief rabbi. He followed in his father's footsteps after earning degrees in law and Jewish theology and rose quickly through the ranks of Jewish scholars. At 26, he was called to lead the community in the town of Ancona.
Following the 1943 German invasion of Italy, which saw thousands of Italian Jews deported and killed, Mr. Toaff joined a resistance group that fought in the mountains of central Italy and worked to hide Jews and other victims of persecution. Captured by the Nazis at one point, he was sentenced to death by firing squad and forced to dig his own grave, but managed to escape.
After the war, Mr. Toaff served as rabbi of Venice and taught at its university. In 1951, he became chief rabbi of Rome, helping to revitalize a community still reeling from the loss of more than 2,000 people sent to Nazi death camps.
While marked by the steady improvement of relations with Catholics, Mr. Toaff's tenure also had its moments of sorrow, including a periodic resurgence of anti-Semitic sentiment and the 1982 attack by Arab extremists that killed a two-year-old boy and wounded 36 people among worshippers leaving Rome's main synagogue.
Four years later, Mr. Toaff and John Paul shared a historic embrace in the same monumental synagogue, built over the remains of the ghetto in which previous popes had confined Jews for centuries.
Widely known across Italy as a respected intellectual, Mr. Toaff published books on Jewish culture and in 2005 he was proposed by some politicians as a candidate to become a senator-for-life in parliament.
He was deeply loved within his own community and many wept openly when, at the age of 86, he told his congregation, "You need a younger rabbi." Mr. Toaff, who was widowed, leaves three sons and a daughter.
To submit an I Remember: obit@globeandmail.com
Send us a memory of someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page. Please include I Remember in the subject field.