Catholic theologians have taken the unprecedented step of asking Pope Leo XIV to break the Church’s silence on the theological legitimacy of the State of Israel, arguing that influential antisemitic Catholics are leveraging this silence to demonize the Jewish nation.
In an open letter to Leo, dated June 22, 2026, theologians Fr. Antoine Lévy and Prof. André Villeneuve from Catholics for Israel note that the Holy See “has never issued a magisterial statement that could be read as even a minimal theological acknowledgment of [Israel’s] legitimacy.”
The theologians warn Leo that the magisterium’s “theological silence” is “being weaponized” by high-profile Catholic influencers like Matt Fradd, Candace Owens, and Carrie Prejean Boller, who rely “on a systematic vilification of the State of Israel” and strive to sever the Catholic Church’s rapproachment with the Jewish people begun at the Second Vatican Council.
The Holy See “has never issued a magisterial statement that could be read as even a minimal theological acknowledgment of [Israel’s] legitimacy.”
These “self-proclaimed theologians” have “interpreted this silence as a formal dismissal of the very possibility of ascribing any theological resonance to the founding of the State of Israel and to its enduring existence,” emphasize Lévy and Villeneuve, who have both completed graduate studies in Rome and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Citing Catholic anti-Israel influencers, the letter explains how Fradd’s “Small Catechism on Christian Zionism” grants Israel “a legitimate political reality, but not the fulfillment of Scripture.” Owens calls Israel “demonic,” and Boller told a White House commission that “Catholics do not embrace Zionism.”
Villeneuve earlier responded to Boller’s characterization of Catholic Zionism as a “war-mongering heresy,” labelling it “rhetorical demonization.” President Donald Trump fired Boller from the White House Religious Liberty Commission in February 2026 for hijacking a hearing on antisemitism.
Since October 7, 2023, “the world has known an unparalleled campaign of calumny against the State of Israel,” the letter states. “The Church’s silence regarding Israel’s right to exist,” it warns, “gives ground to all those Catholic voices that wish to lend this campaign of denigration the authority of the Church’s own name.”
“We therefore dare to submit the following question to Your Holiness: should Catholics interpret the creation and enduring existence of the State of Israel as a sign of God’s providence—or should they not?” the letter asks.
Catholics for Israel represents a growing number of Catholics who identify as “Catholic Zionists.” The letter draws Leo’s attention to its recent “Catholic Appeal in Support of Israel,” signed by several Catholic theologians, priests, and deacons, including Fr. Philipp Renczes, professor at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, and Gavin D’Costa, professor at Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.
D’Costa calls himself a “Catholic Zionist,” explaining that “the unconditional gift of the election of the Jewish people is the theological foundation of Catholic Zionism” and that the Church is never called the “New Israel” in the New Testament.
Catholics for Israel ends its letter recalling the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust, when the Jews “most needed a word of solicitude” from the Vatican, noting that this “pontifical silence” remains a “harrowing memory” for European Jews and their friends.
“Given the many Catholics who are helping to stoke the flames of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, while claiming to speak for all Catholics, it is imperative that the papacy address this trend.”
Lévy and Villeneuve hold senior positions in Catholic institutions. Lévy, a Dominican priest, is the former director of the Helsinki Studium Catholicum, and a member of the Roman Catholic-Messianic Jewish Dialogue Group. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Helsinki University, Department of Ecumenical Theology, and at the University of Eastern Finland, School of Theology. Villeneuve is an associate professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Michigan and a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
“We should commend Vatican II reforms like Nostra Aetate, which represent a sea change in Catholicism’s official views towards Israel,” David Parsons, senior vice president for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, said. “However, they have left open the key issue of the theological significance of Israel’s rebirth as a nation in the Jewish ancestral homeland.”
“Given the many Catholics who are helping to stoke the flames of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, while claiming to speak for all Catholics, it is imperative that the papacy address this trend by clarifying from a biblical perspective the rightful place of Israel in the land promised to them by divine oath as an everlasting possession,” Parsons observed.
Rome’s theological position on Israel has played a critical role in its diplomatic policies. Giulio Meotti, in his book The Vatican Against Israel, explains how “theological anti-Zionism, which represents a major current in the Catholic Church, pursues a long-term eliminationist policy.”
“With a long history of Contra Judaeos literature, there is now a new genre of Contra Israel discourse that has spread among the Vatican officials and Popes,” Meotti writes, noting that despite acceptance by every Western nation and even the Communist bloc, the Vatican only recognized Israel in 1993.
In their letter, Catholics for Israel reminds Pope Leo of Pope Pius X’s reply to Theodor Herzl in 1904 during an audience seeking papal support for a Jewish state in Palestine: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore, we cannot recognize the Jewish people.”
