"
God's name was dishonored
: in the madness of hatred, during the Second World War, more than one hundred thousand Slovak Jews were killed. And when they wanted to erase the traces of the community, here the synagogue was demolished". Thus
Pope Francis
meeting the Jewish community in Bratislava. "The divine name, that is, his own personal reality, is named in vain when the unique and unrepeatable dignity of man, created in his image, is violated - he affirmed -. Here the name of God has been dishonored, because the worst blasphemy than it can be done to him is to use it for his own purposes, rather than to respect and love others ".
"We are united - I reiterate it - in
condemning all violence, all forms of anti-Semitism
, and in committing ourselves so that the image of God in the human creature is not profaned", said Bergoglio. "Dear brothers and sisters, your history is our history, your pains are our pains", said the pontiff.
In these lands, Pope Francis told the Slovak authorities, "until a few decades ago a
single thought
precluded freedom; today another single thought empties it of meaning, tracing progress back to gain and rights to individualistic needs only". "Today, as then - he added -, the salt of faith is not an answer according to the world, it does not lie in the ardor to wage cultural wars, but in the meek and patient sowing of the Kingdom of God, first of all with the witness of charity, of love".