Elio Toaff, spiritual leader, 1915-2015

Elio Toaff, who has died aged 99, doggedly pursued the cause of reconciliation between Catholics and Jews as chief rabbi of Rome for 50 years - even hosting Pope John Paul II in the city's main synagogue for a historic first visit.

It was on April 13 1986 that the Polish pontiff processed from the Vatican to what is known as Rome's Tempio Maggiore across the Tiber river, to brush away centuries of mistrust and rekindle a bond between the two faiths.

"We walked in together, in the middle of a quiet crowd, like in a dream, with the Pope by my side, and cardinals, prelates and rabbis behind us," Toaff wrote in his autobiography. "We rose to the teva [lectern] and turned to the audience. And then the applause burst out. It was long and liberating, for me and those in the crowd who finally fully understood the importance of the moment."

During his remarks, John Paul II expressed his "abhorrence" for the Holocaust, and insisted that there was no "theological justification" for persecution against Jews. But according to Toaff's account, it was the following line that triggered a new "unstoppable" round of clapping from the audience.

"You are our dearly beloved brothers," the Pope said. "And, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers." When John Paul II died in 2005, Toaff was one of only two living people cited in his will, along with the pontiff's personal secretary.

Elio Toaff was born on April 30 1915 in Livorno and retained a "marked" Tuscan accent, according to people who knew him well. During the second world war, when thousands of Italian Jews suffered persecution, discrimination and death at the hands of occupying Nazi troops and Italian fascists, Toaff took to the hills to fight as a partisan.

He was arrested and faced execution by firing squad - telling friends he was forced to dig his own grave before managing to escape. Toaff also witnessed one of the most gruesome wartime massacres, when German troops stormed the village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. They killed an estimated 560 people, including 130 children, then set the corpses on fire and sat down for lunch.

In the aftermath of the war he became a rabbi in Venice, and then chief rabbi of Rome in 1951. "The community was devastated, torn apart, with most families destroyed, and generally poor," says Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community. "His hard task was to rebuild the soul and give back dignity to this community."

To a large extent, Mr Pacifici believes Toaff succeeded in that mission. "He was certainly the man of Jewish resurgence, who gave voice to the community. He made us proud of being Jewish in Italy and in Europe," he adds.

Federico Niglia, a professor of international history at Luiss university in Rome, says one of Toaff's legacies was to combat a desire in postwar Italy to minimise the role of Italians - as compared with Germans - in the persecution and deportation of Jews, despite the racial laws passed by dictator Benito Mussolini. "There was a tendency to say, 'Italians are good people'," Prof Niglia says. "But he contributed to a narrative of history that was a bit more authentic."

Equally, Toaff remained on guard against any new threats to Italian Jews, from the occasional sprouting of neo-fascist groups to international terrorism - taking tough stands. In 1982, just a month after Yassir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation visited Rome and was received by the very popular Italian president Sandro Pertini, Palestinian terrorists attacked Rome's synagogue, killing a two-year old and injuring 37 people. In what was seen as a sharp rebuke, Toaff discouraged Pertini from coming to the boy's funeral, saying he could not guarantee his safety. Pertini went anyway.

Mr Pacifici remembers how "traumatic" it was for the community to accept Toaff's decision to leave as chief rabbi in 2001. "He had the humbleness of stepping back when he thought he couldn't fulfil his responsibilities. He was also capable of staying in the shadows without interfering with who succeeded him," adds Mr Pacifici.

But it is in Toaff's ability to rebuild both the identity of Italian Jews and their ties with Catholicism that he will be most keenly remembered. "He is the only rabbi who was part of the Italian resistance movement and who has dialogued with the Catholic Church. He has done things that, singularly, other rabbis have done too. But never all of them together," says Ariel Toaff, his son and a professor of history in Israel, who survives him along with three siblings.

"Even if he died at 120 years of age, he would have been missed anyway."

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