Rabbi A James Rudin, the longtime interreligious affairs director for the American Jewish Committee, will be conferred the prestigious Papal Knight of St Gregory for his work on Catholic-Jewish relations, one of the few non-Catholics to receive the honour.
Only eight other Jews have been knighted by the order, established in 1831, that recognises personal service or unusual labor in support of the Catholic Church. Among them are three other rabbis, David Rosen and the late Mordecai Waxman and Leon Klenicki.
A Reform rabbi and also a writer who has contributed hundreds of columns over the years to Religion News Service, Rudin traveled widely meeting with popes, presidents, Protestant denominational leaders and world-famous evangelists in his efforts to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.
This year he also published a memoir, The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents, detailing his 42 trips across the Atlantic on behalf of the AJC.
“For more than 50 years, Rabbi James Rudin has worked to advance Catholic-Jewish relations, and interfaith relations on a wider scale, with extraordinary skill, dedication, and success,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, said in a statement. “The impact of this work continues to grow as successive generations build on the foundation Rabbi Rudin has established.”
Read the article by Yonat Shimron in Sight Magazine.