Referring to anti-Jewish prejudice repeatedly as “evil,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan called on “Catholics and all Christians” to “to meditate on our faith’s rejection of antisemitism” during Lent, in a commentary published March 12 on The Free Press.

In a column titled “The Evils of Antisemitism,” the Archbishop of New York wrote unequivocally about the nature of hatred directed at the Jewish people.

“I hope this message is clear enough: Antisemitism is a grave sin, the work of Satan himself. The devil hopes to divide God’s people, to make them fear and eventually hate each other. In rejecting Satan’s lies and empty promises, as Christians are called to do this Lent, in the weeks before Easter—and as our Jewish neighbors prepare for Passover—we renounce his plans to divide the children of Abraham from one another.”

Cardinal Dolan has regularly appeared at interfaith events in New York and spoken as a guest at synagogues, including in October 2024, when he said at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, “This Gentile from down the street yearns to stand with you.”

Cardinal Dolan quoted a letter he received from a Jewish resident of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, who wrote of her trepidation after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. “Every morning she would walk her little daughter to school and would smile at her neighbor as that mom walked her two children to the nearby Catholic school. ‘That Catholic mom must have noted my anxiety and fear those dreadful days after the attack,’ the Jewish mom wrote, ‘because she came up to me and whispered, ‘Why don’t we all walk together?’”

“For any Jewish people who might be reading this, please know: The Catholic Church stands with you in the struggle against antisemitism,” Cardinal Dolan wrote.

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