From left: JUF Chairman Bill Silverstein, Archbishop Blase Cupich and JUF President Steven B. Nasatir.

“We need to continue the healing process,” was one of the strong messages leaders of Chicago’s Jewish community received from Archbishop Blase Joseph Cupich in a visit to the Jewish United Fund April 15.

Cupich, who was installed as the ninth Archbishop of Chicago last November, met with lay and professional leaders of JUF’s Jewish Community Relations Council and Rabbinic Action Committee, Chicago Board of Rabbis, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, and members of the Catholic Jewish Scholars Dialogue.

“We sometimes get naïve and think that the effort of education, and speaking against anti-Semitism, is kind of a done deal, and it isn’t,” Cupich said. “As we look at the landscape of the world today, we see that there are large numbers of people who have not embraced the changes in Church doctrine and continue to embrace the old narrative [vis a vis Jews].”

He applauded the strong and varied efforts of the Chicago Archdiocese and Jewish organizations, including JUF, ADL and AJC, to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations. Among those efforts has been a JUF program and curriculum on modern Israel for Catholic schools, which to date has taken 35 teachers on educational visits to Israel.

Another initiative involving JUF, AJC and Spertus is the annual Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Jerusalem Lecture, for which Cupich delivered opening remarks in March.

“Recent events call us to enhance our efforts at mutual understanding and make them more widely known, to develop a positive narrative that will capture the imagination of most people, and to make our positive relationships that which comes first to mind for the majority of people,” Cupich said, in those remarks. “The default position must be positive—friendship, hospitality, mutual concern—precisely those characteristics evident as we come together this evening.”

In his meeting with Jewish leaders, Cupich called on Catholics and Jews to build on the great record of cooperation in Chicago and find new ways to cooperate. “We have a joint responsibility to be servants within the public realm,” he said.