President Reuven Rivlin thanked Pope Francis on Thursday for his work on behalf of world Jewry and his fight against anti-Semitism, saying, “Your absolute condemnation of acts of anti-Semitism and your definition of such acts as anti-Christian are a significant step in the ongoing fight to stamp it out.” said the president, and emphasized “the State of Israel has full freedom of worship for all religions in all holy places.”
Rivlin spoke to the pope at length about the return of Israeli citizens and the bodies of IDF soldiers who are held by Hamas as a basic humanitarian condition for any possible future arrangement and updated the pontiff on the “Land of the Monasteries” project that is progressing in the Jordan Valley, close to the baptismal site of John the Baptist. At the end of the audience with the Pope, the president presented him with “Assemble Jerusalem”, a 3D print of the Old City of Jerusalem in stainless steel created by Lorin Fridberg, a student at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.