Francis Attends Exhibit of Blasphemous Painting ‘White Crucifixion’ by Jewish Artist Marc Chagall

It’s his favorite, no less!

Francis Attends Exhibit of Blasphemous Painting ‘White Crucifixion’ by Jewish Artist Marc Chagall

‘Pope’ Francis has had a busy weekend.

After creating 21 new ‘cardinals’ in public consistory on Saturday (with a noticeable facial bruise), he presided over the Novus Ordo worship service in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, followed by the Angelus. In the afternoon, he went to the Piazza di Spagna in Rome for a public act of veneration of the statue of the Immaculate Conception.

After paying lip service to the Immaculate Mother of God, the false pope, whose real name is Jorge Bergoglio, went to dishonor her Divine Son by attending an exhibit of his favorite painting, the blasphemous work White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

The artwork, which was created in 1938 and is usually kept at the Art Institute of Chicago, is currently being exhibited at the Palazzo Cipolla Museum in Rome. It can be viewed online here.

Bergoglio can be seen admiring White Crucifixion in this video clip released by Vatican News:

The Vatican appears to be a co-sponsor of the Chagall exhibit, which is connected to the Jubilee Year 2025, as a recent Vatican press release suggests:

On Tuesday 26 November 2024, at 10.00, the opening of the exhibition “Chagall in Rome. The White Crucifixion” will be held. The White Crucifixion, work of the celebrated Belarusian painter Marc Chagall, will be on display for the first time in Rome – and in Italy – at the Fondazione Roma Museum Centre – Palazzo Cipolla. The Exhibition, the fourth exceptional exhibition of the Cultural Programme “Jubilee is Culture”, curated by the Dicastery for Evangelization, Section for Fundamental Issues of Evangelization in the World, will be open to the public with free admission from 27 November 2024 to 27 January 2025, every day from 10.00 to 20.00.

The pro-prefect of the Dicastery, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the extraordinary Commissioner for the Juibilee, mayor Roberto Gualtieri, the president of Fondazione Roma Franco Parasassi, and Don Alessio Geretti, art expert and collaborator with the Dicastery for the “Jubilee is Culture” Programme, will speak at the inauguration.

(Source: Vatican Press Office, Bollettino, Nov. 22, 2024; formatting given.)

A report on the inauguration was posted on the Vatican’s official Jubilee 2025 web site and includes a photo:

• Exhibition of Chagal’s White Crucifixion inaugurated at Palazzo Cipolla in Rome as part of the “Jubilee is Culture” season (Nov. 26, 2024)

So, just where is the blasphemy?

The official description of the painting found on the web site of the Art Institute of Chicago gives a glimpse of the blasphemy inherent in the work:

White Crucifixion is the first in Marc Chagall’s series of compositions that feature Jesus as a Jewish martyr and dramatically call attention to the persecution and suffering of Jews in 1930s Germany at the hands of the National Socialist Party. Chagall stressed Jesus’s religious identity by depicting him and the biblical figures above him in traditional Jewish garments. The surrounding images show the devastation of pogroms, violent attacks against Jewish communities often organized or sanctioned by local governments. Combining the Crucifixion with contemporary events, Chagall’s painting links the martyred Jesus with the Jewish people being persecuted across Europe and implicitly compares the Nazis with Jesus’s tormentors.

(“White Crucifixion”, Art Institute of Chicago)

In other words, the work portrays the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ as something other than what it was. The Sacrifice of the Cross offered by our true High Priest, our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has been eclipsed and replaced. In its stead Chagall placed a ‘Jesus’ who represents the suffering and persecuted unbelieving Jews!

Thus the painter actually turns the saving divine truth on its head: No longer is the true Victim of the Cross Jesus Christ, who died to redeem mankind from sin; now it is apostate Judaism — they “that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Apoc 2:9) — the very religious force that diametrically opposes Jesus Christ and His supernatural Kingdom and will ultimately accept the Antichrist as its messiah (see Jn 5:43)! What a blasphemous inversion of the truth!

And that’s just one blasphemous aspect of the work. More information about the problems with the painting can be gleaned from the following links:

• Jesus on the Cross by Chagall by Dr. Marian T. Horvat (Tradition in Action, 2013)
• Pope Francis’ Favorite Painting (Maurice Pinay Blog, 2013)
• Update on the White Crucifixion (Call Me Jorge Blog, 2014)

Of course none of this is to deny that many Jewish people — those who adhere to the false Judaism that emerged after Christ established the New and Eternal Covenant — have indeed suffered persecution at various times in history. And we certainly have nothing but condemnation for the despicable National Socialists (Nazis), whose execrable doctrines have been condemned by the Catholic Church, most notably in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (1937).

But in no wise does this entitle anyone to commit blasphemy, nor does it relativize nor change the Catholic position on the religion of apostate Judaism.

Aside from the blasphemy in Chagall’s White Crucifixion, what makes everything so much worse is that the work enjoys the endorsement of the man whom practically the whole world recognizes as the Pope of the Catholic Church! In the eyes of the world, therefore, the blasphemy now has the approval of Christ’s own Vicar!

Indeed, Francis has long publicized his love for Chagall’s White Crucifixion.

In 2010, before he became ‘Pope’, Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin published an interview book with Bergoglio under the title El Jesuita (‘The Jesuit’), which was published in English three years later as Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013). On page 153, he is asked to name his favorite painting, and he answers: “White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall”. He makes reference to the painting earlier in the convdersation as well, stating: “To my mind, it’s one of the most beautiful things he painted” (p. 27). We blogged about this here in 2014.

In 2015, it was publicized widely that Francis’ favorite painting is White Crucifixion when the blasphemous artwork was sent over to Florence, Italy, for an exhibit.

So, the revelation that Francis loves Chagall’s painting is nothing new. What is new is that he has now been able to view and honor it in person, and the whole world was watching.

Image source: YouTube (screenshot)
License: fair use