The Israeli press is offering some compelling, and surprising, stories related to the pope’s visit to the Holy Land — including this one about three priests who were born Jewish:

Father Gregorcz Pawlowski believes he can be both a Roman Catholic priest and a Jew

The 78-year-old Holocaust survivor says Mass and tends to the other spiritual needs of the small Polish-speaking community in Jaffa. He also fasts on Yom Kippur and plans to be buried in a Jewish cemetery in his native Poland. He has asked the chief rabbi of Poland to say Kaddish at his funeral. His gravestone is already in the cemetery in Izbica where his mother and sisters were murdered.

Pawlowski was born a Jew. He is not the only priest in Israel who continues to draw on his Jewish past to enrich his religious life.

Jesuit David Neuhaus was born a Jew in South Africa and became interested in converting to Catholicism while studying in Jerusalem. He is the head of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community here and attends a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem on a regular basis. His congregants observe many Jewish holidays.

Father Romuald-Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel, born during the Holocaust, embraces his dual identity as a Jew and Catholic. He was not told he was born Jewish until 12 years after he became a priest. Now he wants to move to Israel.

All three of these priests are proud of their Jewish origins and say that being Jewish anchors their Christianity. They manage to bridge the gap between the two religions by embracing Jesus and his followers as Jews.

The three priests laud the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. This historic council repudiated charges of deicide against Jews, denounced anti-Semitism and ruled that the Mass may be offered in the vernacular, said Neuhaus during an interview at the Pontifical Bible Institute in Jerusalem.

The Hebrew-speaking Catholics here had been advocating a similar position toward Jews ever since the community was founded in 1955.

The spiritual journeys of the three are very different.

Continue at the link for their stories.