The Fundamental Agreement is seen as a concordat that deals with tax exemptions and property rights of the Catholic Church and related entities within Israeli territory that entered into force on 10 March 1994, but has not been ratified by the Knesset.

These issues include the beatification of Pope Pius XII despite his failure to speak out against the Holocaust while it was still happening,[9] the pardoning of a Holocaust-denying priest, and the subordination of inter-religious dialogue to evangelical aims.

Diplomatic incidents occurred as John Paul II met PLO chairman Arafat several times, against the protests of the Israeli government and some Jewish organizations.

[19] The Pope had a strategic aim to work for the upgrading of the positions of the Catholic communities in the Middle East from a passive minority to active citizens, participating in formulating their countries' agendas, as he pointed out in a speech made on 11 October 1992 at the Pontifical Lateran University.

The Israeli government decided to work for improving relations through back channels, and this led to the creation in December 2001 of the Cardinal Bea Center for Judaic Studies within the Gregorian University, which held many Israeli–Vatican events under its auspices rather than the Vatican Secretariat of State.

In early 2009, the Holy See officially protested about a TV program by Israeli comedian Lior Shlein, who claimed that Mary wasn't really a virgin and that Jesus did not walk on water.

On 1 May 1948, just two weeks before end of the British Mandate, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Auspicia quaedam, expressing concern over the survival of the holy places in case of war.

Article 4 of the Fundamental Agreement affirmed Israel's "commitment to maintain and respect the 'Status quo' in the Christian Holy Places" and "guarantee of the freedom of Catholic worship".

Alongside recognition, the Nuncio received an instrument enabling him to gain effective control and legal authority over all Catholic institutions and property in Israel – a very powerful and unparalleled tool he had hitherto never had, neither under Turkish domination nor Jordanian rule.

The loaded relations began with the process of separation of the Early Christian community from the bonds of mainstream Judaism, which were accompanied by a vast corpus of polemical literature, in which Jews had their share as well.

It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left nineteen centuries before.

Any rapprochement toward the Jewish state was curtailed because of the conviction that, in order to safeguard the wellbeing of Christians under Muslim-Arab rule, the Vatican would have to pay the political price of supporting Arab claims against Israel.

The Vatican's then Foreign Minister, Domenico Tardini (without being even a bishop, but a close collaborator of Pius XII) said to the French ambassador in November 1957, according to an Israeli diplomatic dispatch from Rome to Jerusalem: I have always been of the opinion that there never was an overriding reason for this state to be established.

[55] A threat upon this status of victimization would emerge in 1963, when after a long period of silence on the part of Jewish Holocaust survivors, the Shoah began to attract major public media attention with the onset of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961).

Piteous appeals still reach us from numerous refugees, of every age and condition, who have been forced by the disastrous war to emigrate and even live in exile in concentration camps, the prey to destitution, contagious disease and perils of every sort.

One was based on political and theological reservations against Zionism, which corresponded with attitudes of Catholic Arab communities whose members had taken a leading part in shaping the Palestinian national movement.

[63] His papal encyclical Pacem in terris has at times been re-evaluated in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as was done by John Paul II in his message for World Day of Peace of 2003 (par.

He also met the Israeli President near Meggido, but Vatican official statements regarding the visit refrained from mentioning the State of Israel by name, rather referring to "the Holy Land".

Hence, since 1967, Vatican diplomacy vis-à-vis Israel began to waver between two parameters: The establishment of full diplomatic relations in 1993–94, on the other hand, was a belated political consequence of the pastoral approach towards Judaism as reflected in Nostra aetate.

After the decision was made, Ratzinger reportedly called his Jerusalem acquaintance, Professor Zwi Werblowsky to express his joy over the development, describing it as the fruit of the work of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

The long-time pre-announced Papal visit took place without a formal invitation – the Pope's personal desire overruling objections held by his advisors and of local Palestinian Catholics.

[80] While the Papacy of John Paul II was marked by (and perhaps an agent of) one major historical event – the fall of the Iron Curtain, Benedict XVI's has been characterized by a plethora of current affairs – some influencing the Holy See directly, some indirectly.

In January 2009, wishing to heal the rift with the society, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications, stirring outrage both in Israel and amidst world Jewry, since one of the four bishops, Richard Williamson was a Holocaust denier.

[87] In January 2009, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel suspended contacts with the Vatican, and on 4 February 2009, German prosecutors announced the launch of a criminal investigation into Williamson's statements.

[89] In June 2009, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued "A Note On Ambiguities Contained in Reflections On Covenant and Mission", a document suggesting that interfaith dialogue should be used as an opportunity to evangelize Jewish interlocutors.

The Vatican ship has shifted course, and the dialogue is backsliding ... the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, without consultation or warning to their Jewish partners, issued "A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflections on Covenant and Mission," which rejected a clear statement that there can be no attempts to convert Jews as part of the interfaith dialogue ... (and) that the Vatican had officially affirmed its decision to jettison a teaching in the American adult catechism that the "covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them ... a one-two punch against a continuing trust in the permanence of the Catholic Church's reform in its teachings about Jews[90] On 26 October 2009, the USCCB decided to remove the problematic phrases from the revised document, stating that interfaith dialogue "has never been and will never be used by the Catholic Church as a means of proselytism ... nor is it a disguised invitation to baptism".

At the Notre Dame Centre in Jerusalem, the same Imam Tamimi who had spoiled a similar inter-religious event during the papal visit in 2000, delivered an anti-Jewish invective in front of Pope Benedict, who interrupted the meeting by leaving earlier than planned.

During the reception that was held for him in Bethlehem on 13 May, the Pope said: the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders.

In his farewell speech before leaving to Rome on 15 May 2009, this balance was expressed as follows: Let it be universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders.

The New York Times noted the recognition could lend "significant symbolic weight to an intensifying Palestinian push for international support for sovereignty that bypasses the paralyzed negotiations with Israel".