os Aires Metropolitan Cathedral in 2012,[151] and joined a group of clerics from a number of

Gregory Venables, Anglican Bishop of Argentina, said that Cardinal Bergoglio had told him very clearly that the Personal Ordinariate(s) (the branch of the Catholic Church set up for defecting Anglicans) was "quite unnecessary", and that the Catholic Church needed Anglicans as Anglicans. A spokesman for the Ordinariate said the words were those of Venables, not the Pope.[146]
Mark Hanson, then presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), greeted the news of Bergoglio's election with a public statement that praised his work with Lutherans in Argentina.[147]
Evangelical leaders including Argentine Luis Palau, who moved to the US in his twenties, have welcomed the news of Bergoglio's election as Pope based on his relations with Evangelical Protestants, noting that Bergoglio's financial manager for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires was an Evangelical Christian whom Bergoglio refers to as a friend.[148] Palau recounts how Bergoglio would not only relax and "drink mate" with that friend, but would also read the Bible and pray with him, based on what Bergoglio called a relationship of friendship and trust.[148] Palau describes Bergoglio's approach to relationships with Evangelicals as one of "building bridges and showing respect, knowing the differences, but majoring on what we can agree on: on the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his resurrection, the second coming."[148] As a result of Bergoglio's election, Palau predicts that "tensions will be eased."[148]
Juan Pablo Bongarrá, president of the Argentine Bible Society, recounts that Bergoglio not only met with Evangelicals, and prayed with them—but he also asked them to pray for him.[149] Bongarrá notes that Bergoglio would frequently end a conversation with the request, "Pastor, pray for me."[149] Additionally, Bongarrá tells the story of a weekly worship meeting of charismatic pastors in Buenos Aires, which Bergoglio attended: "He mounted the platform and called for pastors to pray for him. He knelt in front of nearly 6,000 people, and [the Protestant leaders there] laid hands and prayed."[149]
Other Evangelical leaders agree that Bergoglio's relationships in Argentina make him "situated to better understand Protestantism".[150] Noting that the divide between Catholicism and Protestantism is often present among members of the same families in Argentina, and is therefore an extremely important human issue, "Francis could set the tone for more compassionate conversations among families about the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism."[150]
Judaism
Bergoglio has close ties to the Jewish community of Argentina, and attended Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) services in 2007 at a synagogue in Buenos Aires. He told the Jewish congregation during his visit that he went to the synagogue to examine his heart, "like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers".[151] After the 1994 AMIA bombing of a Jewish Community Center there that killed 85 people, Bergoglio was the first public figure to sign a petition condemning the attack and calling for justice. Jewish community leaders around the world noted that his words and actions "showed solidarity with the Jewish community" in the aftermath of this attack.[151]
A former head of the World Jewish Congress, Israel Singer, reported that he worked with Bergoglio in the early 2000s, distributing aid to the poor as part of a joint Jewish-Catholic program called "Tzedaká". Singer noted that he was impressed with Bergoglio's modesty, remembering that "if everyone sat in chairs with handles [arms], he would sit in the one without."[151] Bergoglio also co-hosted a Kristallnacht memorial ceremony at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral in 2012,[151] and joined a group of clerics from a number of different religions to light candles in a 2012 synagogue ceremony on the occasion of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.[152]
Abraham Skorka, the rector of the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, and Bergoglio published their conversations on religious and philosophical subjects as Sobre el cielo y la tierra (On Heaven and Earth).[153] An editorial in Israel's Jerusalem Post notes that "Unlike John Paul II, who as a child had positive memories of the Jews of his native Poland but due to the Holocaust had no Jewish community to interact with in Poland as an adult, Pope Francis has maintained a sustained and very positive relationship with a living, breathing [Jewish] community in Buenos Aires."[153]
One of the pope's first official actions was writing a letter to Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, inviting him to the papal installation and sharing his hope of collaboration between the Catholic and Jewish communities.[154] Addressing representatives of Jewish organizations and communities, Francis said that, "due to our common roots [a] Christian cannot be anti-Semitic!"[155][156]
Islam

bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival

Bergoglio has written about his commitment to open and respectful interfaith dialogue as a way for all parties engaged in that dialogue to learn from one another.[138] In the 2011 book that records his conversations with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Sobre el cielo y la tierra, Bergoglio said:[138]
Dialogue is born from an attitude of respect for the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It assumes that there is room in the heart for the person’s point of view, opinion, and proposal. To dialogue entails a cordial reception, not a prior condemnation. In order to dialogue it is necessary to know how to lower the defenses, open the doors of the house, and offer human warmth.
Religious leaders in Buenos Aires have stated that it was Bergoglio who "opened up the Cathedral in Buenos Aires for interfaith ceremonies".[139] For example, in November 2012 he brought "leaders of the Jewish, Muslim, evangelical, and Orthodox Christian faiths" together in the Cathedral to pray for peace in the Middle East.[139] Leaders quoted in a 2013 Associated Press article said that Bergoglio has a "very deep capacity for dialogue with other religions", and considers "healing divisions between religions a major part of the Catholic Church's mission".[139]
Shortly after his election, the pope called for more interreligious dialogue as a way of "building bridges" and establishing “true links of friendship between all people".[140] He added that it was crucial “to intensify outreach to nonbelievers, so that the differences which divide and hurt us may never prevail".[140] He said that his title of "pontiff" means "builder of bridges", and that it was his wish that "the dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced."[140]
Eastern Orthodox Church
Bergoglio is recognized for his efforts "to further close the nearly 1,000-year estrangement with the Orthodox Churches".[141] Antoni Sevruk, rector of the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Catherine the Great Martyr in Rome, said that Bergoglio "often visited Orthodox services in the Russian Orthodox Annunciation Cathedral in Buenos Aires" and is known as an advocate on behalf the Orthodox Church in dealing with Argentina's government.[142]
Bergoglio's positive relationship with the Eastern Orthodox Churches is reflected in the fact that Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople attended his installation.[143] This is the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, a position considered first among equals in the Eastern Orthodox Church organization, has attended a papal installation.[144] Orthodox leaders state that Bartholomew's decision to attend the ceremony shows that the relationship between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches is a priority of his, but they also note that Francis's "well-documented work for social justice and his insistence that globalization is detrimental to the poor" may have created a "renewed opportunity" for the two Church communities to "work collectively on issues of mutual concern".[143][e]
Protestantism
Gregory Venables

ons with Kirchner's widow and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have been similarly ten

Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa replaced Carlos Menem as president of Argentina in 1999. As an archbishop, Bergoglio celebrated the annual Mass at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral on the First National Government holiday, 25 May. In 2000, Bergoglio criticized the perceived apathy of society.[127] During police repression of the riots of December 2001, he contacted the Ministry of the Interior and asked that the police distinguish rioters engaged in acts of vandalism from peaceful protesters.[128]
Kirchners


Pope Francis with Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
When Bergoglio celebrated Mass at the Cathedral for the 2004 First National Government holiday, President Néstor Kirchner attended and heard Bergoglio request more political dialogue, reject intolerance, and criticize exhibitionism and strident announcements.[129] Kirchner celebrated the national day elsewhere the following year and the Mass in the Cathedral was suspended.[130] Kirchner considered Bergoglio as a political rival to the day he died in October 2010.[131] Bergoglio's relations with Kirchner's widow and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have been similarly tense. In 2008, Bergoglio called for national reconciliation during disturbances in the country's agricultural regions, which the government interpreted as a support for anti-government demonstrators.[131] The campaign to enact same-sex marriage legislation was a particularly tense period in their relations.[131]
In 2006, Bergoglio publicly opposed an attempt by the Argentine government to legalize some cases of abortion.[132] In 2007, after the government intervened to allow an abortion for a mentally handicapped woman who had been raped, Bergoglio said that "in Argentina we have the death penalty. A child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be condemned to death." Kirchner said in response that "the diagnosis of the Church in relation to social problems in Argentina is correct, but to mix that with abortion and euthanasia is at least a clear example of ideological malfeasance."[133][d]
In 2012, Bergoglio participated in the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Falklands War.[135]
On the day before his inauguration as pope, Bergoglio, now Francis, had a private meeting with Kirchner. They exchanged gifts and lunched together. This was the new pope's first meeting with a head of state, and there was speculation that the two were mending their relations