Father
Jaeger, who belongs to the Custody of the Holy Land since 1981, was ordained a
priest in 1986. He took up his new role on Friday June 3, 2011, but the
appointment had previously been announced by the Press Office of the Holy See
early last May.
This appointment represents an important recognition of an intellectual
high-profile figure, who at the same time is a witness of a personal and
intense journey of faith.
Born in 1955, in Tel Aviv, Israel into a family of the Jewish bourgeoisie,
David Jaeger was educated in the city’s Zionist religious schools. In his later
youth he converted to Catholicism and entered into his religious vocation. For
several years he held important positions in the Holy Land, including Director
of the study program on Christianity at the Ecumenical Institute of Theological
Research at Tantur (Jerusalem) and Secretary for the Ecumenical and
Inter-Religious Liaison of the United Christian Council in Israel (UCCI) After
obtaining his a PhD in Canon Law, he was a professor at the Studium Biblicum
Franciscanum in Jerusalem (1986-1992).
From 1992 until 1998, he acquired further fundamental experience in the legal
field while working in Texas, in the United States. Since 1999, he has taught
Canon Law at the “Antonianum” Pontifical University of Rome and is a Consultor
of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, the Congregation for the Clergy, the
Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and the Pontifical Council for the
Family.
Father Jaeger has always been sensitive and attentive to the problems of the
Holy Land and the development both institutionally and diplomatically of
ecumenism and Jewish-Christian dialogue. He is well known on an international
level since 1992, for his role as a member of and juridical expert for the Delegation
of the Holy See to the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy
See and the State of Israel. In this capacity he provided an essential
contribution to the progress of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and
Israel and the negotiations that led to the signing of agreements between the
two States in 1993.
The news of Father Jaeger’s appointment to the Roman Rota
is a ‘source of joy and pride for the whole of the Franciscan community’ and,
in particular, for the Custody of the Holy Land, for whom he has
enthusiastically worked for a long time, even as Delegate of the Custody in
Rome. He has always kept a bond of deep affection with the Custody. The Jewish
Israeli world also dedicated an article in Haaretz to Father Jaeger on the day his
new appointment became effective. The article sympathetically recounts his path
and his difficult choices, underlining the human delicacy and the excellent
cultural gifts of a man who has been able to testify to and render fertile, in
the highest institutional and ecclesiastical circles, the richness of his
spiritual synthesis between Jewish roots and Christian sensitivity.
