Two weeks ago, I was boarding an early morning flight to Chicago full of excitement about the journey I was embarking upon. The truth is, however, that the journey had begun in 2024 when several young Jews and Catholics had been selected to represent the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to meet over a period of several weeks on Zoom as the first-ever “Religion for Good” cohort.

As the events of October 7th and its aftermath had revealed, Jews felt alone. But those who stepped up courageously during those difficult times as friends directly touched our deepest wounds and were welcomed by our raw and lonely hearts. It was in this spirit that we met online, people of different faiths living the maxim that religion can and should be used for good, for the promotion of mutual understanding and peaceful dialogue between the children of God. Online, we got a small taste of how beautiful it could be to lean into not only our commonalities but also into our differences as we discussed theology, history, and regular everyday life.

Then, in October of 2025 I met a few of my classmates in person for the first time at St. Thomas University’s Nostra Aetate 60th anniversary celebration, where we participated in a panel discussing how we, as the young generation, were living the principles of Nostra Aetate. That document, which I wrote about in my previous article, was proclaimed by the Catholic Church during Vatican II in 1965. Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) declared that there was no place for antisemitism within the Church, that God’s covenant with the Jews was irrevocable, and that learning from and respecting all the children of God of any faith was to be pursued.

It is also the precise document that brought approximately 15 Catholics and 15 Jews to the Chicago Theological Union (CTU) during an arctic blast two weeks ago. Freezing temperatures and falling snow could not deter us from our “In Our Time” mission of opening our hearts in friendship and our minds in understanding. What better place for our holy encounter with each other than CTU, of which Pope Leo XIV is an alumnus, an institution that was built after Vatican II, particularly designed to be a leader in interreligious dialogue, which even features a Jewish studies program taught by Jews themselves, currently led by........

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