Pope Leo, Your Hands May be Clean — But What About Rome’s? An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIV

NEW YORK (VINnews/Rabbi Yair Hoffman) – He stood before tens of thousands in brilliant Roman sunshine on Palm Sunday, the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church, and he thundered.

“This is our G-d: the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”

He was, of course, referring to a statement by Pete Hegseth, without mentioning his name, and declared that G-d does not listen to the prayers of leaders who start wars — that He rejects them, saying: “Your hands are full of blood.”

The words were electric. They were extraordinary. Coming from the Bishop of Rome, addressing 1.4 billion Catholics on the holiest week of their calendar, calling the Iran war “atrocious,” condemning airstrikes, ramping up his moral pressure week after week — Pope Leo XIV has positioned himself as the world’s conscience.

Whether he may well be right about Iran or not is one issue, the bible does say that at times war is necessary.

But Holy Father — we need to talk about blood.

Because if G-d rejects the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood, then the Jewish people have a question that cannot be deflected, cannot be papered over with diplomatic niceties, and cannot wait another quarter century for a vague jubilee apology.

What about the blood on Rome’s own hands?

The Machinery of Torture — Authorized by Popes

This is documented history, chapter and verse, bull by bull, stake by stake.

In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV issued the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus — authorizing the Spanish Inquisition. The document dripped with contempt for Jews who “revert to the rites and customs of the Jews” and spoke of “perfidy” that must be “expelled.” Within two years, the first tribunal was active in Seville, and within its opening years alone, it had pronounced 700 death sentences and more than 5,000 additional punishments — imprisonment, exile, confiscation of property — in that city alone.

In 1233, Pope Gregory IX formally institutionalized the Inquisition, charging Dominican and Franciscan orders to hunt down heretics across Europe. Jews who had converted under duress and dared to light Shabbos candles, to fast on Yom Kippur, to buy vegetables before Pesach — these were the “crimes” that could bring the inquisitors to your door.

In 1536, Pope Paul III established the Portuguese Inquisition specifically to target Jewish conversos — Jews who had been forcibly baptized and now faced torture if they whispered a Hebrew prayer. The number of victims between 1540 and 1765 alone: an estimated 40,000 human beings.

Pope Paul IV established the Roman ghetto, stripping Jews of dignity and rights within sight of the Vatican itself. Pope Pius IX — as recently as 1867 — canonized Peter Arbues, an inquisitor celebrated for the forcible conversion of Jews, and praised the canonization by saying G-d arranged it specifically because “Jews help the enemies of the church with their books and money.”

This was not some rogue bishop operating in a distant province.

These were popes.

These were papal bulls — official documents of the Church, bearing the full weight of Rome’s authority. The torture chambers, the autos-da-fé, the burning at the stake, the tearing of children from their parents — all of it blessed, all of it authorized, all of it done in the name of the same G-d whose “gentle face” Pope Leo invoked on Sunday.

Thirteen Jews burned at Troyes.

Hundreds executed in Seville.

Hundreds of thousands expelled from Spain in 1492 — elderly men, nursing mothers, children — driven into the sea because Torquemada persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella that Jewish presence was incompatible with Christian Spain. And through it all, the Bishop of Rome either commanded, condoned, or acquiesced.

The Double Standard That Cannot Be Ignored

Pope Leo has been “ramping up criticism” — his aides’ own words — of the Iran war. Week after week he returns to the microphone, sharpening his language, raising the moral stakes. When American officials invoke Christian religious language to justify the strikes — when the Defense Secretary prays for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” — the pope is appalled.

But here is the question the Jewish world is asking, quietly, persistently, with a patience born of 2,000 years of suffering at Christian hands:

Where is that same escalating moral urgency for us?

True, Pope John Paul II offered a sweeping apology in the year 2000 — for “sins against the Jews” among other categories. It was meaningful and welcomed.

It was also 26 years ago. 

It was general rather than specific, and it named no popes, no bulls, no victims, no instruments of torture. It was the moral equivalent of apologizing for “mistakes were made” without specifying what they were or who made them.

Pope Leo has shown he is capable of something far more powerful than that. He proved it on Palm Sunday. He stands before the world and says: G-d will not hear the prayers of those with blood on their hands. He says it with passion. He says it with specificity. He names the sin — war — and he names the consequence — divine rejection.

Will he show that same courage when the accused is not Pete Hegseth, but Gregory IX? Not a Defense Secretary, but Sixtus IV? Not a general conducting airstrikes against a murderous regime that has killed Israelis and its own people, but an inquisitor conducting an auto-da-fé?

What We Are Asking

We are not asking for theater. We are not asking for a press release or a carefully worded diplomatic statement that says everything while committing to nothing.

We are asking for what Pope Leo himself preached on Palm Sunday.

He told the world that the founder of Christianity “did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war.” That he “revealed the gentle face of G-d.” That G-d “always rejects violence.”

Beautiful. Now apply it to the violence done to the Jews of Spain. Apply it to the violence done to the conversos of Portugal. Apply it to the Jews of the Roman ghetto, to the thirteen burned at Troyes, to the families torn apart in Seville. Apply it — specifically, courageously, by name — to the popes who ordered it, funded it, and blessed it.

A true accounting of the soul — requires more than acknowledging that “mistakes were made.” It requires naming the sin, naming the sinner, and asking forgiveness from those who were harmed.

The Jewish people were harmed. We are still here. We are still asking.

When will you say the same about Rome?

Your moral voice is the most powerful on earth right now. Use it — not only for the Christians of the Middle East, but for the Jews whose ancestors’ bones lie beneath the ashes of the Inquisition’s fires, in the shadow of a Church that called itself the house of a G-d who rejects violence.

We are still waiting, Holy Father.

We have been waiting for five hundred years.

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