Roger Tilles of Manhasset recalls 1994 Vatican concert, as Rabbi A. James Rudin receives papal knighthood

It was a key international moment in repairing Jewish-Catholic relations, and Long Island’s Roger Tilles was in the middle of it.

Tilles, a developer and member of the New York State Board of Regents who lives in Manhasset, played a key role in organizing a historic 1994 concert where the Vatican — then headed by Pope John Paul II — commemorated the Holocaust for the first time.

Now, 28 years later, one guest of honor at the concert who along with Tilles had a special meeting with John Paul II at the event — Rabbi A. James Rudin — is receiving the highest honor a pope can bestow.

Rudin, 88, a longtime promoter of interfaith understanding at the American Jewish Committee in Manhattan who met with John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI a total of 13 times, will receive the Papal Knighthood of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.

The ceremony Sunday in Saint Leo, Florida, will mark only the third time in history a pope has granted an American rabbi the honor — and comes amid increased antisemitic activity in the United States and around the world.

Tilles did not play a direct role in the honor, and won’t be there Sunday — the two men lost touch over the years. But as he watches from afar with pride, he said the rabbi with whom he helped make history nearly three decades ago deserves the knighthood for his efforts to bring disparate religions closer.

Rudin “is certainly worthy of it,” said Tilles, who is also Jewish and worked with the rabbi on the concert.

“He has been his whole life involved in reaching out to different faiths,” Tilles said, “and certainly the Catholic faith.”

'Came as a surprise'

On Sunday, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, of the Archdiocese of Boston, is scheduled to present Rudin with the papal knighthood. O’Malley will represent Pope Francis.

Saint Leo University, where Rudin is a distinguished professor of religion and Judaica, will host the ceremony. Rudin also founded the school’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies.

“I’ve been doing interreligious work for over 50 years, and this came as a surprise from the Vatican,” Rudin said in a telephone interview. “It’s a highlight of both my professional and personal life.”

Tilles has been active in interfaith work for years. He founded a program with the late Msgr. Thomas Hartman — himself part of “The God Squad” with Rabbi Marc Gellman — called Project Understanding. It brings together Jewish and Catholic teenagers for a mission to Israel each year.

Tilles recalled that in 1994 he received a call asking if he would help raise funds for a concert at the Vatican. It would take place on Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the Nazi killings of 6 million Jews in Europe.

He agreed, and before long he was asked to take on the additional role of producing the concert itself. His Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at the then-C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University handled that task as well.

The event turned into a landmark moment in Catholic-Jewish relations.

Those relations had been strained for 2,000 years, with Jewish people particularly pained over what they considered Pope Pius XII’s timid response to the Nazi extermination program.

The concert in the 7,500-seat Pope Paul VI Audience Hall, in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica, capped a series of developments aimed at repairing the relationship. So did a special, surprise audience earlier that day with John Paul II attended by Rudin and Tilles.

“This is a unique, an extraordinary moment in the long and complicated history of our two ancient faith communities,” Rudin told Newsday at the time. “It is a moment that will not come our way ever again.”

Tilles had requested he and other organizers get a photo taken with the pope. Instead, John Paul II granted them, along with some Nazi concentration-camp survivors, a two-hour session to talk about the Holocaust and interfaith understanding.

At one point, Tilles told the pope, “Thank you for bringing the power of your commitment to commemorate the Shoah together with the unique power of music.”

Advancing interfaith relations amid rising antisemitism

In 1831, Pope Gregory XVI started the knighthood in honor of St. Gregory the Great, who died in 604 and whose writings greatly influenced the church.

In a statement, O’Malley said that for more than a half-century, Rudin “has worked to advance Catholic-Jewish relations, and interfaith relations on a wider scale, with extraordinary skill, dedication, and success.”

The Catholic church, he added, “was particularly blessed by Rabbi Rudin’s many years of close working relationships with Cardinal John O’Connor in New York and Pope Saint John Paul II.”

Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg, director of United Nations Relations and Strategic Partnerships for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Manhattan, worked with Rudin for years. He said the papal honor is especially important in 2022.

“With the dangerous rise in antisemitism around the country and the world, which is shattering enough, it’s important for people to see the close relationship that’s developed between the Catholic church and the Jewish people over the last 60 years,” he said.

Rudin also said the fight against antisemitism is far from over, despite decades of advocacy by him and others.

“We always thought that after World War II and the end of the Holocaust, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism,” that antisemitism would fade away, Rudin said. “Tragically, this pathology, like any cancer, sometimes comes back. And we have to really, really go after it, Christians and Jews and Muslims. Christian-Jewish relations is one way of doing it.”