Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, a former director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago who taught the man who is now known as Pope Leo XIV, died on June 26, according to Fr. Enzo Del Brocco, president of Catholic Theological Union. He was 86
The CTU president called Pawlikowski, who was a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and president of the International Council of Christians and Jews, one of the school’s “founding voices” and among the “most distinguished theologians of Christian-Jewish relations.”
“As one of CTU’s founding faculty members, John helped shape this institution from its earliest years while contributing significantly to the development of Catholic theology in the decades following the Second Vatican Council,” he stated. “Over nearly five decades of teaching, he formed generations of students, scholars and religious leaders, among them Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, who studied Catholic social teaching under him at CTU.”
“John was one of the world’s foremost Catholic theologians of Christian-Jewish relations and among the principal architects of the church’s renewed relationship with the Jewish people in the spirit of Nostra Aetate,” the CTU president added. “Through his scholarship, teaching and decades of dialogue, he demonstrated that authentic encounter with people of other faiths is neither peripheral nor optional but lies at the very heart of the church’s mission and faithful witness.”
Ari Gordon, director of Muslim-Jewish relations at the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that Pawlikowski, who penned several books and more than 100 scholarly and other articles and contributed to about 20 volumes, was a “giant” of the field of Christian-Jewish relations, who was a “mentor and friend.”
Pawlikowski held one of the first academic chairs of Christian-Jewish study in academia and “contributed to the formation of thousands of seminarians from around the world, including one local boy who would go on to become Pope Leo XIV,” according to Gordon.
“He was deeply invested in Holocaust awareness and countering antisemitism and helped develop and advise the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,” Gordon told JNS. “He approached both Jewish and Catholic communities with the criticism and love of an insider, who truly wants to bring out the best in each.”
“Whenever Christian-Jewish relations hit a bump around a theological issue, liturgical development, personnel challenge or a divisive war in the Middle East, John always found a way to say, ‘We’ve seen worse, we’ve come so far and we are obliged to determine how to move forward together,’” Gordon said.
“John Pawlikowski was a prolific scholar, a man of great integrity, a hero of interreligious relations and a dear friend,” he told JNS.
Malka Simkovich, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society and visiting professor at Yeshiva University, held the chair at Catholic Theological Union after Pawlikowski.
She told JNS that he was an “expert of Catholic social ethics, who dedicated much of his career to Catholic-Jewish dialogue.”
In 1968, when he founded CTU’s program in Catholic-Jewish studies, “such a program was unheard of and considered to be radical,” according to Simkovich. “Fr. Pawlikowski used this platform to establish an internationally renowned center of dialogue.”
Beyond CTU, he was “known as an expert in the Second Vatican Council’s teachings, and the church’s teachings about Jews and Judaism in particular,” and “because of his scholarly expertise, much of his work centered on the Holocaust and the church’s role in spreading teachings that enabled the Nazi’s extermination of 6 million Jews,” Simkovich said.
“Pawlikowski was also vocal about the need for his own Polish Catholic community to confront its legacy of historic Jew-hatred,” she told JNS. “Aside from the countless awards and recognitions that he received, Pawlikowski’s true legacy lies in the fact that nearly every person active in Catholic-Jewish dialogue was in touch with him in some way and benefited from his friendship.”
Simkovich told JNS that she met Pawlikowski after she moved to Chicago and was finishing her dissertation. She was invited to address the Catholic-Jewish Scholars Dialogue, which met quarterly at the Jewish United Fund.
“After my talk, an older man in a collar introduced himself to me as Fr. John Pawlikowski, and said, ‘I’m about to retire from Catholic Theological Union, and I’d like you to apply for my job,’” she said. “A few weeks later, I found myself in the office of Fr. Mark Francis, president of CTU, and a few months after that, I was offered the position of professor of Jewish studies and director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program.”
Pawlikowski was a mentor to Simkovich, who, she said, wanted the school to “be a home for scholarly and honest Jewish-Christian dialogue.”
“Rather than simply passing the baton and leaving CTU upon retirement, he spent countless hours in my office, laying out the landscape of Catholic-Jewish relations and sharing what he knew about the church’s transformed attitude towards the Jewish people,” she told JNS. “He attended every lecture, every conference and every event I organized. He gave me space, but did everything he could to make sure I could succeed.”
She added that Catholic Theological Union “was not without its challenges, and things didn’t always go right.”
“When a student in 2018 demanded that I be fired after I taught about antisemitism in Poland—in her words, ‘I come from a country with no history of antisemitism'—Fr. Pawlikowski, himself a proud first-generation Polish American, met with me to discuss next steps,” Simkovich said. “When I told him I intended to quit because of her harassment, he talked me down a ledge. And when he got a call from the Polish consulate of Chicago, which was conducting an investigation into my ‘anti-Polish activities’ at this student’s request, Fr. Pawlikowski told them to back off. And they did.”
Pawlikowski worried that the church was “backsliding,” according to Simkovich.
“He wanted CTU to be a stronghold of Catholic-Jewish friendship, but winds of tension were brewing. Conflicts in the Middle East were sowing tension in Catholic-Jewish relations in the West, and he wanted to ensure that, whatever happened, these relations would be airtight,” she said. “He had dedicated his life to building a strong foundation—one that now seemed to him to be more tenuous than it once was years earlier—and it seems to me that he wanted to retire with the confidence that these relations would strengthen and thrive.”
“My sense is that John wanted to retire with the confidence that, in the absence of the first generation of Catholic and Jewish leaders who lay the foundation of friendship, these relations would grow and thrive,” she told JNS.
Though Pawlikowski worried about the future of Catholic-Jewish relations, he did so only in the short-term, according to Simkovich.
“When someone complained about the state of Catholic-Jewish relations, he liked to respond that they need not worry. All Jews and Christians had to do was work on their relationship for another 500 years,” she said. “Above all, that’s what I learned from Fr. Pawlikowski. Never give up on the work you believe in, even if your work won’t bear fruit in your lifetime.”
