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The Chief Rabbi of Vienna, Arie Folger, has taken issue with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI over his treatment of the “substitution theory” that coloured relations between Jews and Christians over many centuries, and was used to justify persecution of Jews by Christians.

In an article in the July edition of Communio magazine Benedict claimed that the so-called substitution theory, according to which God’s covenant with the Jewish people was revoked after Christ’s Crucifixion, and Gentiles took on the mantle of his chosen people, had never been part of church teaching and had therefore actually never existed.

In the German Jewish weekly "Jüdische Allgemeine" on 19 July Rabbi Folger called this claim “ahistorical revisionism”.
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